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EMMY LOU’S ROAD TO GRACE 





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“ ‘Its name/ said Miss Eustasia severely, ‘is the Highland 
Fling.’ ” 


[page 152 ] 


EMMY LOU’S 

ROAD TO GRACE 

BEING A LITTLE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS 


BY 

GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN 

AUTHOR OF “SELINA,” “EMMY LOU,” ETC. 


What danger is the 'pilgrim ini 
How many are his foes l 
How many ways there are to sin 
No living mortal knows. 

— The Pilgrim’s Progress 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
NEW YORK LONDON 

1916 


6/m B 


V 



Copyright, 1916, by 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 


J 




4 (>• 

Printed in the United States of America 

OCT 10 1916 / 

©C/.A4450G1 r/ 




TO 

THAT HOSTAGE GIVEN TO THE FUTURE 

THE AMERICAN CHILD 


T 

rO 

© 


C5>o 

£ 

F 



PREFACE 


Some years ago a collection of short stories under 
the title, “Emmy Lou: Her Book And Heart,” was 
offered to the American public as a plea for and a 
defense of the child as affected by the then prevailing 
stupidity of the public schools. 

The present series of stories is written to show 
that the same conditions which in the school make for 
confusion in the child’s mind, exist in the home, 
in the Sunday school and in all its earlier points of 
contact with life; the child who presents itself at 
six or even at five, to the school and teacher, being 
already well on the way in the school of life, and 
its habits of mind established. 

It is the contention of these new stories that 
the child comes single-minded to the experience of 
life. That it brings to this experience a fundamen- 
tal, if limited, conception of ethics, justice, con- 
sistency and obligation. That it is the possessor of 
an innate conscience that teaches it to differentiate 
vii 


Preface 


between right and wrong, and that the failure to 
find an agreement between ethics and experience con- 
fronts the child long before its entrance at school. 

Not only do its conceptions fail to square with 
life as it finds it, but the practices and habits of 
the persons it looks up to fail to square with what 
these elders claim for life. Further, the child meets 
with an innate stupidity on the part of its elders 
that school cannot surpass, a stupidity which as- 
sumes knowledge on the child’s part that it cannot 
possibly have. 

These conditions make for confusion in the child’s 
mind, and a consequent impairment of its reasoning 
faculties, before it presents itself to the school. 

Given the very young child struggling to evolve 
its working rule out of nebulse, how do its elders 
aid it? The isolated fact without background or 
connection, the generalization with no regard to 
its particular application, the specific rule that will 
not fit the general case — these too often are its por- 
tion, resulting in lack of perspective, no sense of pro- 
portion, and no grasp of values. The child’s concep- 
tions of the cardinal virtues, the moral law, the 
fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of Christ, 
viii 


Preface 


the human relation, are true, garbled, or false, 
in accordance with the interpreting of its elders. 

The child thus has been in the training of the 
home, the neighborhood, and the Sunday school, 
for approximately four, three, and two years re- 
spectively, before it comes to the school of letters. 

One of the intelligences thrashing out the prob- 
lems of the school today, says: 

“Education begins at the age of two or sooner, 
whether the parent wills it or not. The home influ- 
ence from two to six, for good or ill in determin- 
ing the mental no less than the moral status, is the 
most permanent thing in the child’s life. Even at the 
age of five, the difficulty for the teacher in making 
a beginning, lies in the fact that the beginning al- 
ready has been made.” 

In the original stories portraying the workings 
of the schoolroom on the mind of the child, the 
physically normal, mentally sound but slow type 
was used, in the child called Emmy Lou, and in now 
seeking to show that the conditions making for more 
or less permanent confusion in the child’s mind an- 
tedate the schoolroom, it has seemed wise to make 
use of the same child in the same environment. 


IX 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Out of God’s Blessing into the Warm 

Sun 3 

II. Shades of the Prison House ... 35 

III. A Few Strong Instincts and a Few 

Plain Rules 65 

IV. The Tribunal of Conscience . . 95 

V. Lions in the Path 131 

VI. The Imperfect Offices of Prayer . 161 

VII. Pink Tickets for Texts .... 195 

VIII. Stern Daughter of the Voice of God . 225 

IX. So Build We Up the Being that We 

Are 255 

X. So Truth Be in the Field . . . 279 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


“ ‘Its name/ said Miss Eustasia severely, ‘is the 

Highland Fling’ ” Frontispiece 

FACING 

PAGE 

“ ‘When I turned roun’ ag’in I saw ’em goin’ in 

th’ough the doah’ ” 2d 

“ ‘Po’ white/ she said” 44 

“ ‘They begun to peak and then to pine. And still 

they wouldn’t mind’ ” 68 

“Why should that monstrous bulk of elephant have 

trumpeted just then?” 124 

“With one pink ticket in hand, fifty-one yet to be 

achieved for texts” 212 


“ ‘There is a skirt for everyone and a feather and 

a fan’ ” 240 

“ ‘We haven’t got a show against the girls ... to 

sell anything’ ” 292 




OUT OF GOD’S BLESSING INTO 
THE WARM SUN 


I 


I 


OUT OF GOD’S BLESSING INTO THE WARM 
SUN 

For a day or two after Emmy Lou, four 
years old, came to live with her uncle and her 
aunties, or in fact until she discovered Izzy 
who lived next door and Sister who lived in 
the alley, Aunt Cordelia’s hands were full. 
But it was Emmy Lou’s heart that was full. 

Along with other things which had made 
up life, such as Papa, and her own little white 
bed, and her own little red chair, and her own 
window with its sill looking out upon her own 
yard, and Mary the cook in Mary’s own kitch- 
en, and Georgie the little neighbor boy next 
door — along with these things, she wanted 
Mamma. 

Not only because she was Mamma, all-wise, 
2 3 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


all-final, all-decreeing, but because, being 
Mamma and her edicts therefore supreme, she 
had bade her little daughter never to forget to 
say her prayers. 

Not that Emmy Lou had forgotten to say 
them. Not she! It was that when she went 
to say them she had forgotten what she was to 
say. A terrifying and unlooked-for contin- 
gency. 

Two days before, Papa had put his Emmy 
Lou into the arms of Aunt Cordelia at the 
railroad station of the city where she and Aunt 
Katie and Aunt Louise and Uncle Charlie 
lived. They had come to the train to get her. 
As he did so, Mamma, for whose sake the trip 
south was being made in search of health, 
though Emmy Lou did not know this, smiled 
and tried to look brave. 

Emmy Lou’s new little scarlet coat with its 
triple capes was martial, and also her new 
little scarlet Napoleon hat, three-cornered with 
4 


Out of God's Blessing Into the Warm Sun 


a cockade, and Papa hastened to assume that 
the little person within this exterior was mar- 
tial also. 

“Emmy Lou is a plucky soul and will not 
willingly try you, Cordelia,” he told his sister- 
in-law. 

“Emmy Lou is a faithful soul and has prom - 
ised not to try you,” said Mamma. 

“Kiss Mamma and kiss me,” said Papa. 

“And say your prayers every night at Aunt 
Cordelia’s knee,” said Mamma. 

“Pshaw,” said Uncle Charlie, the brother 
of Mamma, and the aunties, and wheeling 
about and whipping out his handkerchief he 
blew his nose violently. 

“Brother!” said Aunt Katie reproachfully. 
Aunt Katie was younger than Mamma and al- 
most as pretty. 

“Brother Charlie!” said Aunt Louise who 
was the youngest of them all, even more re- 
proachfully. 


5 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


“Shall I send her to Sunday school at our 
church, or at your church?” said Aunt Cor- 
delia, plump and comfortable, and next to 
Uncle Charlie in the family succession. For 
Papa’s church was different, though Emmy 
Lou did not know this either — and when 
Mamma had elected to go with him there had 
been feeling. 

“So she finds God’s blessing, Sister Cor- 
delia, what does it matter?” said Mamma a 
little piteously. “And she’ll say her prayer 
every night and every morning to you?” 

On reaching home. Aunt Cordelia spoke 
decidedly. “Precious baby! We’ll give her 
her supper and put her right into her little 
bed. She’s worn out with the strangeness of 
it all.” 

Aunt Cordelia was right. Emmy Lou was 
worn out and more, she was bewildered and 
terrified with the strangeness of it all. But 
though her flaxen head, shorn now of its brave 
6 


Out of God's Blessing Into the Warm Sun 


three-cornered hat, fell forward well-nigh into 
her supper before more than a beginning was 
made, and though when carried upstairs by 
Uncle Charlie she yielded passively to Aunt 
Cordelia and Aunt Katie undressing her, too 
oblivious, as they deemed her, to be cognizant 
of where she was, they reckoned without know- 
ing their Emmy Lou. 

Her head came through the opening of the 
little gown slipped on her. 

“Shall I say it now?” she asked. 

“Her prayer. She hasn’t forgotten, pre- 
cious baby,” said Aunt Cordelia and sat down. 
Aunt Katie who had been picking up little 
garments, melted into the shadows beyond 
the play and the flicker of the fire in the 
grate, and Emmy Lou, steadied by the 
hand of Aunt Cordelia, went down upon her 
knees. 

For there are rules. Just as inevitably as 
there are rites. And since life is hedged about 
7 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


with rites, as varying in their nature as in their 
purpose, and each according to its purpose at 
once inviolate and invincible, it is for an Emmy 
Lou to concern herself with remembering their 
rules. 

As when she goes out on the sidewalk to 
play “I-spy” with Georgie, the masterful 
little boy from next door, and his friends. 
Whereupon and unvaryingly follows the rite. 
The rule being that all stand in a row, and 
while the moving finger points along the line, 
words cabalistic and potent in their spell crypt- 
ically and irrevocably search out the quaking 
heart of the one who is “It.” 

So in the kitchen. The rule being that 
Mary, who is young and pretty and learning 
to cook under Mamma’s tutelage, shall chant 
earnestly over the crock as she mixes, words 
which again are talismanic and potent in their 
spell, as “one of butter, two of sugar, three of 
flour, four eggs,” or Mary’s cake infallibly 
8 


Out of God's Blessing Into the Warm Sun, 


will fall in the oven, stable affair as the oven 
grating seems to be. 

And again at meals, rite of a higher class, 
solemn and mysterious. When Emmy Lou 
must bow her head and shut her eyes — what 
would happen if she basely peeked she hasn’t 
an idea — after which, Papa’s “blessing” as 
it is called, having been enunciated according 
to rule, she may now reach out with intrepidity 
and touch tumbler or spoon or biscuit. 

So with prayer, highest rite of all, most 
solemn and most mysterious. Prayer being 
that potency of the impelling word again by 
which Something known as God is to be propi- 
tiated, and one protected from the fearful if 
dimly sensed terrors of the dark when one 
comes awake in the night. 

Emmy Lou’s Mamma, hitherto the never- 
failing refuge from all that threatened, haven 
of encircling sheltering arms and brooding 
tender eyes, provided this protection for her 
9 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


Emmy Lou before she went away and left her. 
And more. She gave Emmy Lou to under- 
stand that somewhere, if one grasped it aright, 
was a person tenderly in league with Mamma 
in loving Emmy Lou, and in desiring to com- 
fort her and protect her. A person named 
Jesus. He was to be reached through prayer 
too, and, like God in this also, through Sunday 
school, this being a place around the corner 
where one went with Georgie, the little boy 
from next door. 

These things being made clear, no wonder 
that Mamma bade her Emmy Lou not to fail 
to go to Sunday school, and never to forget to 
say her prayers! 

And no wonder that Emmy Lou quite ear- 
nestly knew the rules for her prayers. That 
it hurt her knees to get down upon them had 
nothing to do with the case. The point with 
which one has to do is that she does get down 
on them. And being there, as now, steadied to 
10 


Out of God’s Blessing Into the Warm Sun 


that position by the hand of Aunt Cordelia, 
she shuts her eyes, as taught by Mamma, 
though with no idea as to why, and folds her 
hands, as taught by Mamma, with no under- 
standing as to why, and lowers her head, as 
taught by Mamma, on Aunt Cordelia’s knee. 
And the rules being now all complied with, she 
prays. 

But Emmy Lou did not pray. 

“Yes?” from Aunt Cordelia. 

But still Emmy Lou failed to pray. In- 
stead her head lifted, and her eyes, opening, 
showed themselves to be dilated by apprehen- 
sion. “Mamma starts it when it won’t come,” 
she faltered. 

Aunt Cordelia endeavored to start it. “Now 
I lay me . . .” she said with easy conviction. 

Emmy Lou, baby person, never had heard 
of it. Terror crept into the eyes lifted to Aunt 
Cordelia, as well as apprehension. 

“Our Father . . .” said Aunt Katie, com- 
il 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


ing forward from the shadows. Emmy Lou’s 
attention seemed caught for the moment and 
held. 

“. . . which art in Heaven,” said Aunt 
Katie. 

Emmy Lou shook her head. She never had 
heard of that either, though for a moment it 
appeared as if she thought she had. A tear 
rolled down. 

“Go to bed and it will come to you tomor- 
row,” from Aunt Cordelia. 

“Say it in the morning instead,” from Aunt 
Katie. 

But Emmy Lou shook her head, and clung 
to Aunt Cordelia’s knees when they would lift 
her up. 

Aunt Cordelia was worn out, herself. One 
does not say good-bye to a loved sister, and 
assume the care of a chubby, clinging baby 
such as this one, without tax. “Whatever 
is to be done about it?” she said to Aunt 
12 


Out of God's Blessing Into the Warm Sun 


Katie despairingly. Then to Emmy Lou, 
“Isn't there anything you know that will 
do?” 

There are varying rites, differing in their 
nature as in their purpose, but each according 
to its purpose inviolate and invincible. 

“I know Georgie’s count out?” said Emmy 
Lou. “Eeny, meeny, miny, mo? Will that 
do?” 

But Aunt Cordelia, however sorely tempted, 
could not bring herself, honest soul, to agree 
that it would. Nor yet Aunt Katie. 

Aunt Louise came tipping in and joined 
them. 

“I know Mary’s cake count,” said Emmy 
Lou. “ ‘One of butter, two of sugar, three of 
flour, four eggs.’ Will that do?” 

Not even Aunt Louise could agree that it 
would. 

Uncle Charlie came tipping in. 

“I know Papa’s blessing,” said Emmy Lou. 

13 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


“ ‘We thank Thee, Lord, for this provision 
of Thy bounty ... V ” 

“The very thing,” said Uncle Charlie heart- 
ily. “Set her up on her knees again, Cordelia, 
and let her say it.” 

And Papa’s blessing had served now, night 
and morning, since, though it was evident to 
those about her that Emmy Lou was both du- 
bious and uneasy. 

The processes of the mind of an Emmy Lou, 
however, if slow, are sound, if we know their 
premises. There was yet another way by 
which God could be propitiated, and Jesus, 
who desired to love her and protect her, 
reached. On the morning of her third day 
with her aunties, she inquired about this. 

“When is Sunday school?” 

They told her. “Today is Saturday. Sun- 
day school is tomorrow.” 

She took this in. “Will I go to Sunday 
school?” 


14 


Out of God's Blessing Into the Warm Sun 


“Certainly you will go.” 

She took this in also. So far it was reas- 
suring, and she moved to the next point, 
though nobody connected the two inquiries. 
“There’s a little boy next door?” 

“Yes,” from Aunt Katie, “a little boy with 
dark and lovely eyes.” 

“A sweet and gentle little boy,” from Aunt 
Cordelia. 

“A little boy named Izzy,” from Aunt 
Louise. 

Emmy Lou, looking from auntie to auntie 
as each spoke, sighed deeply. The rules in 
life, as she knew it, were holding good. As, 
for example, was not Aunt Cordelia here for 
Mamma? And Uncle Charlie for Papa? And 
the substitute little white bed for her little 
bed ? And the substitute little armchair where- 
in she was sitting at the moment, for her chair? 

To be sure the details varied. Hitherto the 
cook in the kitchen had been Mary, pink- 
15 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


cheeked and pretty. Whereas now the cook 
in the kitchen not only is round and rolling and 
colored and named Aunt M’randy, but there 
is a house-boy in the kitchen, too, whose name 
is Bob. The stabilizing fact remains, how- 
ever, that there is a cook, and there is a 
kitchen. 

And now there is a little boy next door. For 
you to go to Sunday school with the little hoy 
next door holding tight to his hand, while his 
Mamma at his door, and your Mamma at 
your door, watch you down the street. That 
he lords it over you, edicting each thing you 
shall or shall not do along the way, is accord- 
ing to immutable ruling also, as Georgie makes 
clear, on the incontrovertible grounds that you 
are the littler. 

He has been to Sunday school too, before 
you ever heard of it, as he lets you know, and 
glories in his easy knowledge of the same. 
And whereas you, on your very first Sunday, 

16 


Out of God's Blessing Into the Warm Sun 


get there to learn that Cain killed Mabel, and 
are visibly terrified at the fate of Mabel, ac- 
cording to Georgie it is a mild event and noth- 
ing to what Sunday school has to offer at its 
best. 

He knows the comportment of the place, 
too, and at the proper moment drags Emmy 
Lou to her knees with her face crushed to the 
wooden bench beside his own. And later he 
upbraids her that she fails in the fervor with 
which he and everybody else, including the 
lady who told Emmy Lou she was glad to see 
her, pour forth a hum of words. When he 
finds she does not know these words his scorn 
is blighting. Though when she asks him to 
teach them to her, it develops that he, the 
mighty one, only knows a word here and there 
to come in loud on himself. 

For a moment, the other night, Emmy Lou 
had fancied Aunt Katie was saying these 
words used at Sunday school, but how could 
17 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 

she be sure, seeing that she did not know them 
herself? 

And now there was a little boy next door 
here ! And Emmy Lou arose, her aunties hav- 
ing gone about their Saturday morning affairs, 
and seeking her little sacque with its scalloped 
edge, which she pulled on, and her little round 
hat which she carried by its elastic, went forth 
into the warm comfort of the Indian Summer 
morning to find him. 

He was at his gate ! The rule again ! 
Georgie was ever to be found even so at his 
gate. Emmy Lou was shy, but not when she 
knew what she had to do, and why. Opening 
her gate and going out, paling by paling she 
went along past her house and her yard, to the 
little boy at the gate of his house and his yard. 
When he saw her coming he even came to meet 
her. 

As her aunties had said, he was a dark-eyed 
and lovely little boy. When she reached him 
18 


Out of God's Blessing Into the Warm Sun 


and put out her hand to his, he took it and led 
her back to his gate with him. His name, she 
remembered, was Izzy. 

“Sunday school is tomorrow ?” she said, look- 
ing up at Izzy. 

“Sunday school?” said Izzy. 

“Where Cain killed Mabel?” 

Izzy’s dark eyes lit. He was a gentle and 
kindly little boy. Emmy Lou felt she would 
love Izzy. “We call it ‘Temple.’ But it is 
today. My Mamma told me to walk ahead 
and she would catch up with me.” 

“Today?” 

Surely. With such visible proofs of it upon 
Izzy. Do little boys wear velvet suits with 
spotless collar and flamboyant tie but for oc- 
casions such as Sunday school? Aunties and 
even Mammas know less about Sunday school 
than the Georgies and Izzys, who are authori- 
ties since they are the ones who go. Emmy 
Lou put on her little hat even to the elas- 
3 19 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


tic. Then her hand went into Izzy’s again. 

“I thought it was tomorrow?” 

Izzy’s face was alight as he took in her 
meaning. She was going with him. His face 
was alight as he led her along. 

“It’s ’round the corner?” she asked. 

“ ’Round two corners,” said Izzy. “How 
did you know?” 

A golden dome crowned this Sunday school, 
and wide steps led high to great doors. They 
waited at their foot, Izzy and Emmy Lou, a 
dark-eyed little boy in a velvet suit, and a 
blue-eyed little girl in a gingham dress and 
scalloped sacque, while others went up and in, 
old men, young men, old women, young 
women, little boys, little girls. Waited until 
Izzy’s Mamma arrived and found him. 

She was dark-eyed and lovely too. She lis- 
tened while he explained. Did a shadow, as 
of patient sadness, cross her face? 

“The little girl does not understand, Israel, 
20 


Out of God's Blessing Into the Warm Sun 


little son,” she said. “Hold her hand care- 
fully, and take her back to her own gate. I 
will wait for you here.” 

Emmy Lou, bewildered as she was led along, 
endeavored to understand. 

“It isn’t Sunday school?” she asked Izzy. 

His face was no longer alight, only gentle 
and, like his mother’s, patient. “Not yours. 
I thought it was. Mine and my mother’s and 
my father’s.” 

Little girls left at their own gates, little girls 
who have come to live at their aunties’ home, 
go around by the side way to the kitchen door. 
Emmy Lou had learned that already. If any- 
one had missed her there was no evidence of 
it. Aunt M’randy, just emerging from this 
kitchen door, a coal-bucket heaped with ashes 
in her hand, as Emmy Lou arrived there, 
paused in her rolling gait, and invited her to 
go. 

Where? Emmy Lou in her little sacque and 
21 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


her round hat hadn’t an idea, but seeing that 
she was expected to accept, took Aunt M’ran- 
dy’s unoccupied hand and went. 

And so it was that she found Sister. For 
Aunt M ’randy was going down the length of 
the back yard, a nice yard with a tree and a 
bush and what, palpably in a milder hour had 
been flowers in a border, to the alley-gate to 
empty the ashes. And beyond this alley gate, 
outside which stood the barrel they were 
seeking, in the alley itself, with the cottage 
shanties of the alley world for background, 
stood Sister! One knew she was Sister because 
Aunt M ’randy called her so. 

Sister was small and brown and solid. Small 
enough to be littler than Emmy Lou. Her 
face was serious and her eyes in their setting 
of generous white followed one wonderingly. 

Littler than Emmy Lou! The rule in life 
was extending itself. Hitherto she, Emmy 
Lou, had been that littler one, and hers the eyes 
22 


Out of God's Blessing Into the Warm Sun 


to follow wonderingly, and the effect of 
meeting one thus littler than oneself is to ex- 
perience strange joys, palpably and patently 
peculiar to being the larger. 

Emmy Lou dropped the hand of Aunt 
M’randy and went out into the alley and 
straight to Sister. 

Nor did Sister seem surprised at this, but 
when Emmy Lou reached her and paused, 
sidled closer, and her little brown hand crept 
into Emmy Lou’s white one and clung there. 
Whereupon the white one, finding itself the 
bigger, closed on the brown one and Emmy 
Lou led Sister in through the alley gate, past 
Aunt M’randy, and up through the yard with 
its tree and its bush and its whilom flower 
border. 

More! There was a depression in the pave- 
ment leading up to the house, a depression all 
of the depth of about three of Emmy Lou’s 
fingers. Whereat she stopped, and putting her 
23 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


arms about Sister, solid for all she was a 
baby thing, with straining and accession of 
pink in the face, lifted her over! And the joy 
of it was great! Emmy Lou never had met 
one littler than herself before ! 

That evening at dusk, Aunt Louise came 
in, brisk and animated. Her news was for 
Aunt Cordelia and Aunt Katie, though cer- 
tainly Emmy Lou had a right to be interested. 

“I met Molly Wright, the teacher of the 
infant class at Sunday school/' she said, “and 
I stopped and told her that in the morning you 
would send Emmy Lou around to her class. 
That our house-boy would bring her." 

Aunt Cordelia had her ready the next morn- 
ing aforetime, red coat with triple capes, mar- 
tial hat and all, ready indeed before Bob, the 
house-boy, had finished his breakfast. 

The day was warm and sleepily sunny and 
smiling. 


24 


Out of God's Blessing Into the Warm Sun 


“You may go outside and wait for Bob at 
the gate if you like,” Aunt Cordelia told 
Emmy Lou. 

But Emmy Lou had no idea of waiting at 
any gate. Indecision with her was largely a 
matter of not knowing what she was expected 
to do. She knew in this case. By the time Bob 
was ready and out looking for her, she had 
been down through the alley gate and back, 
bringing by the hand that person littler than 
herself, Sister. Had led her through the front 
gate and along to the next gate where Izzy 
was standing. 

Bob afterward explained his part vocifer- 
ously if lamely. But as Aunt M’randy said, 
that was Bob. 

“There they wuz, the three uv ’em, strung 
erlong by the han’s an’ waitin’ foh me. Seem 
lak there warn’t no call foh me to say nothin’ 
tell we got there.” 

“And then?” from Aunt Cordelia, while 


25 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


Aunt M’randy sniffed with skepticism. 

“When we come to the infant class door 
roun’ on the side street like you tol’ me, there 
wuz a colored boy I know, drivin’ a kerridge, 
an’ he called me. An’ I tol’ the chil’ren to 
wait while I spoke to him. When I turned 
roun’ ag’in I saw ’em goin’ in th’ough the doah. 
An’ I come home.” 

Emmy Lou in truth led them in. Give her 
something that she knew to do, and she could 
do it. Holding to the rule, Izzy was due to 
be there because he was the larger, and Sister, 
laconic little Sister, solid and brown, was due 
to be there because, in the former likeness of 
Emmy Lou, she was the littler . 

One’s place at Sunday school in company 
with Georgie, has been the front bench. The 
rule holds good, and Emmy Lou led the way 
to the front bench now, where she and Izzy 
lifted Sister to a place, then took their own 
places either side of her. If the rest of the 
26 



G'ArfWWtiV 


‘When I turned roun’ ag’in I saw 
the doah/ ” 


’em goin’ in th’ougl 



Out of God's Blessing Into the Warm Sun 


infant class already assembled were absorbed 
in these movements, Emmy Lou did not no- 
tice it, in that she was absorbed in them her- 
self. 

Miss Mollie Wright came in next, breezy 
and brisk and a minute late, and in conse- 
quence full of zeal and business. 

Hitherto the rule has never varied. As 
Emmy Lou knew Sunday school, the lady 
teacher now says, “Good morning, children/’ 
And these say, “Good morning,” in return. 

But the rule varied now. Miss Mollie 
Wright coming around to the front before the 
assembled class on its several benches, stopped, 
looked, then full of sureness and business came 
to Izzy and Emmy Lou and Sister, and took 
Izzy by the hand. 

“I doubt if your mother and father would 
like it, Izzy,” she said. “I think you had bet- 
ter run home again. And this little girl next 
to you doesn’t belong here either.” Miss Mol- 
27 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


lie Wright was lifting Sister down. “I think 
she had better run along as you go.” And in 
the very nicest way she started Izzy and Sister 
toward the door. “What?” turning back to 
the third little figure in a martial coat with 
triple capes and a martial hat. “Why, are 
you going, too?” 

Aunt Cordelia explained to Aunt Katie 
and Aunt Louise and Uncle Charlie after- 
ward. “M’randy saw them when they reached 
home and passed her kitchen window going 
back through the yard, and came and told 
me, and she and I went down to the alley 
gate after them.” 

“What were they doing?” asked Aunt 
Louise. 

Aunt Cordelia answered as one completely 
exasperated and outdone. “Sitting right down 
on the ground there in the alley, in their Sun- 
day clothes, watching M’lissy, on her door- 
step, comb Letty’s hair.” 

28 


Out of God's Blessing Into the Warm Sun 


True! Around M’lissy, the mother of Sis- 
ter, brown herself and kindly, with teeth that 
flashed white with the smile of her there in the 
sun, and Letty, the even littler sister of Sis- 
ter, firm planted on the lowest step, between 
M’lissy’s knees. 

And bliss unspeakable as Izzy and Sister 
and Emmy Lou in a circle on the ground 
around the doorstep watched. For Letty’s 
head, by means of the comb in M’lissy’s hand, 
was being criss-crossed by partings into sec- 
tions, bi-sections, and quarter-sections, and 
such hair as was integral to each wrapped with 
string in semblance of a plait, plait after plait 
succeeding one another over Letty’s head. The 
while M’lissy sang in a mounting, joyful 
chant, interrupted by Letty’s outcry now and 
then beneath the vigor of the ministration. 

“Ow-w, Mammy!” 

The chant would hold itself momentarily for 
a reply. 


29 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


“Shet up,” M’lissy would say. 

Which would be too much even for laconic 
Sister who from her place on the ground be- 
tween Izzy and Emmy Lou would defend 
Letty. “When Mammy wrops yer h’ar, she 
wrops hard.” 

After which the combing and the wrapping 
and the chanting would go on again, M’lissy ’s 
voice rising and falling in quaverings and 
minors : 


“Come to Jesus, come to Jesus, 

Come to Jesus just now, 

Ju-u-st no-o-w co-o-me to-o Jesus, 

Come to Jesus ju-u-st now.” 

Mamma’s friend! In league with her in 
loving Emmy Lou and desiring to comfort her 
and protect her! Found not where she had 
looked for Him at all but here with M’lissy in 
the alley! 

That night, according to rule, as Emmy 
30 


Out of God's Blessing Into the Warm Sun 


Lou’s head came through the opening of the 
gown slipped over it, she said: 

“Shall I say it now? Papa’s blessing?” 

And Aunt Cordelia, according to rule, sit- 
ting down and steadying Emmy Lou to her 
knees, waited. 

What should have brought it back, Emmy 
Lou’s own little prayer as taught her by 
Mamma? She only knew that it came of itself, 
and that while her heart heaved and her breath 
came hard, she stopped in the midst of Papa’s 
blessing, “We thank Thee, Lord, for this pro- 
vision of Thy bounty, ” sobbed, caught 

herself, opened her eyes and looked mutely at 
Aunt Cordelia, closed them and said: 

“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, 

Look upon a little child ; 

Pity my simplicity, 

Suffer me to come to Thee.” 



SHADES OF THE PRISON HOUSE 























0 

























t 













» 












II 


SHADES OF THE PRISON HOUSE 

Papa taking Mamma south, wherever that 
may be, in search of health, whatever that may 
be, carried a rough and wrinkled Father Bear 
satchel. Mamma, pretty Mamma, taken 
south in search of health, carried a soft and 
smooth Mother Bear satchel. And since not 
only do journeys demand satchels but analo- 
gies must be made complete, Emmy Lou left 
on the way in the keeping of her uncle and her 
aunties was made happy by a Baby Bear 
papier-mache satchel, clamps, straps and all. 
A satchel into which a nightgown could be 
coaxed, her nightgown, since satchels demand 
gowns, not to mention a pewter tea set put in 
on her own initiative, provided she folded and 
4 35 




Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


refolded the gown with zeal before essaying 
the attempt. 

After Emmy Lou’s establishment in the 
new household, Aunt Cordelia proposed that 
the satchel go to the attic where trunks and 
satchels off duty belong. But Emmy Lou 
would not hear to this. “Mamma’s coming by 
for me as she goes home, and I want it down 
here so I can have it ready.” 

“And she gets it ready at least once a day,” 
Aunt Cordelia told Uncle Charlie. “If she 
doesn’t wear her gowns out trying to put them 
in it, she will the satchel. However, since she 
heard that her mother lived in this house when 
she was a little girl named Emily, I’ve had 
no further trouble with her, that is, trouble of 
a kind. How does one go about a child’s re- 
ligious training, Charlie?” 

But to Emmy Lou, Aunt Cordelia knew 
all about God and heaven. At her bidding she 
learned a hymn, a pretty text, another prayer. 

36 


Shades of the Prison House 


“For we must learn a little more about God 
and Heaven every day along the way,” Aunt 
Cordelia said. 

With Emmy Lou at bedtime in her lap, a 
blanket wrapped about her gown, the fire flick- 
ering, Aunt Cordelia, to help her get to sleep, 
sang about Heaven. 

“Thy gardens and thy goodly walks 
Continually are green, 

Where grow such sweet and pleasant flowers 
As nowhere else are seen — ” 

“Asleep?” from Aunt Cordelia. “No?” 

Emmy Lou in Aunt Cordelia’s lap was 
amazed to hear these things. “Thy gardens 
and Thy goodly walks!” Hitherto she had 
been afraid of heaven! And afraid of God! 

Aunt Cordelia hearing about it was shocked. 
Truly shocked and no less dismayed at how 
to remedy it, if Emmy Lou had but known it. 

“Afraid of God? Why, Emmy Lou! He 
37 


Emmy Eon’s Road to Grace 


is our Father to go to, just as you run to meet 
Papa.” Aunt Cordelia, gaining heart, took 
fresh courage. “God is everybody’s Father, 
just as Heaven is our home.” 

The Aunt Cordelias may generalize, but 
the Emmy Lous will particularize. 

“Izzy’s father? And Sister’s father? And 
Minnie’s?” 

Israel Judah lived next door, little colored 
Sister lived in the alley, and Minnie lived with 
the lady next door to Izzy. 

“Their Father, and yours and mine and 
everyone’s. Don’t you think you can go to 
sleep now?” 

Emmy Lou was positive she could not. God, 
of whom she had been afraid, is our Father! 

Next door to Emmy Lou, at Izzy’s, lives 
an old, old man. His brows are white and his 
beard falls on his breast. He smiles on Emmy 
Lou when she goes to his knee to speak to 
him, but he draws Izzy to him and kisses him. 

38 


Shades of the Prison House 


Aunt Katie calls him beautiful. Uncle Charlie 
calls him a glorious old patriarch. But Izzy’s 
Mamma calls him father . 

And suddenly to Emmy Lou, there in Aunt 
Cordelia’s lap, God is a Person! He paces 
his goodly walks, as Papa does the flagging 
from the gate to the house with Emmy Lou 
running to meet him. God paces his walks be- 
tween his sweet and pleasant flowers and his 
brows are white and his beard falls on his 
breast. Will he smile on Emmy Lou? And 
on Izzy and Sister and Minnie? Or will he 
draw them to him and kiss them? 

“And at last she went to sleep,” Aunt 
Cordelia, coming downstairs, told Uncle 
Charlie. 

Straight from the breakfast table the next 
morning, Emmy Lou went and brought her 
cloak. 

“Izzy will be waiting for me at his gate,” she 
told Aunt Cordelia. The custom being for 
39 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


the two meeting at Izzy’s gate then to go to 
the alley hunting Sister. 

Aunt Katie came downstairs just here, look- 
ing for Emmy Lou. 

“Do you know where my scissors are? I 
can’t find mine or any others.” 

Emmy Lou has a way of hunting scissors 
for herself and Sister to cut out pictures, 
but is quite sure this time that she is not 
culpable. 

“I ain’t had nary pair,” she assured Aunt 
Katie. 

Aunt Katie, apparently forgetting the scis- 
sors, swept round on Aunt Cordelia who was 
just leaving the breakfast table. 

“There!” she said accusingly. 

“There!” echoed Aunt Louise, still in the 
dining-room, too. “We told you she would 
be picking up such things in the alley!” 

“Emmy Lou,” expostulated Aunt Cordelia, 
“you didn’t mean to say, T ain’t had nary 
40 


Shades of the Prison House 


pair.’ You know better. Think hard and see 
if you can’t say it right.” 

Emmy Lou, the cloak she had brought half 
on, thought hard. “I ain’t had ary pair,” she 
said. 

Aunt Katie spoke positively. “I don’t think 
you ought to let her play so much with Sister. 
Louise and I have said so right along.” 

Not play with Sister! Emmy Lou was 
astounded. She loved Sister, smaller than her- 
self! She turned to Aunt Cordelia for cor- 
roboration. 

Aunt Cordelia was troubled. “Come to me, 
Emmy Lou, and let me put your cloak on you, 
and tie your hood. If she were going to be 
here all the time it would be different,” this to 
Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise. Then to 
Emmy Lou, “Suppose today you stay next 
door and play with Izzy?” 

Emmy Lou was amazed. “And Minnie?” 
she asked. “Mayn’t I play with Minnie?” 

41 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


“She means the little girl who works 
for Mrs. Noble,” explained Aunt Cordelia 
quietly. 

“Mrs. Noble is from over the river,” said 
Aunt Louise in tones which, however one may 
wonder what the river has to do with it, dis- 
qualify this lady at once. “She speaks of the 
child as a little hired girl.” 

“Emmy Lou,” said Aunt Katie, “remember 
that this side of the Ohio we have servants, not 
hired girls.” 

“But she must not call the little girl a serv- 
ant, Katie,” said Aunt Cordelia. “I won’t 
have her hurting the child’s feelings, whatever 
she is.” 

“I call her Minnie,” said Emmy Lou, be- 
wildered. 

“Certainly you do,” said Aunt Cordelia, and 
kissed her. 

Aunt Louise defended Aunt Katie. “While 
the child is hardly to be held responsible, she 
42 


Shades of the Prison House 


has ways, as well as Sister, we certainly do not 
want Emmy Lou to imitate. 5 ’ 

Ways? Minnie? Marvelous, inexhaustible 
Minnie? Certainly she has ways, ways that 
draw one, that hold one. Were Aunt Louise 
and Aunt Katie casting doubts on Minnie? 
As they had on Sister? Emmy Lou in cloak 
and hood looked to Aunt Cordelia for corrob- 
oration. 

Aunt Cordelia looked worried, “Just as she 
is beginning to be a little happier, I wish, 
Louise, you and Katie could let the child 
alone . 55 

“But Minnie?” Emmy Lou wanted to know. 

“Yes, I suppose so. Bun along out, now, 
and play.” 

A sunny winter day it was as Emmy Lou 
went, a day to rejoice in, could one at four 
put the feelings into thought, except that 
Izzy at his gate in his stout coat and his fur 
cap is only mildly glad to see her. Izzy is 
43 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


six years old. Usually kind, and as patient 
to catch her point as to help her to his, just 
now he is engrossed with looking down the 
street. 

Without turning, he does, however, confide 
in her. “Minnie has just gone by to the gro- 
cery!” 

If Emmy Lou had been disposed to be hurt, 
she understood now! Minnie having gone by 
to the grocery would be back! 

They have known her to speak to now for 
a week. She stopped one day at Izzy’s gate 
when he and Emmy Lou and Sister were 
standing there. Her plaits were tied with bits 
of calico and there was a smudge on her wrist ; 
under her arm was a paper bag and in her hand 
a bucket. She swept the three of them, Izzy, 
Emmy Lou, and Sister, up and down with her 
eyes. 

“You go to synagogue,” she told Izzy. “An’ 
your mother’s gone away sick an’ left you,” 
44 



“ ‘Po’ white/ she said.” 




Shades of the Prison House 


she said to Emmy Lou. Then she turned to 
Sister. 

“Nigger,” she said. 

But Sister was what she afterward explained 
as “ready for her.” She had met Minnie be- 
fore, so it proved, and M’lissy, her mother, had 
her ready if she ever met her again. For all 
she was a little thing, Sister swept Minnie up 
and down with her eyes. 

“Po’ white,” she said. 

Which, while meaningless to some — Emmy 
Lou and Izzy for example — brought the angry 
red to Minnie’s cheek. 

This was a week ago. Since then Minnie 
had come out on the pavement twice and joined 
Emmy Lou and Izzy at play. 

Wonderful Minnie! At once instigator and 
leader, arbiter and propounder. Why? Be- 
cause she knew. Knew what? Knew every- 
thing. About the devil who would come right 
up out of the ground if you stamped three 
45 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


times and said his name. Though from what 
Emmy Lou had heard about him at Sunday 
school, and Izzy knew from some boys down 
at the corner, one wondered that any would 
incur the risk by doing either. 

And Minnie knew about gypsies who steal 
little boys and girls out of their beds ! Izzy is 
six, and Emmy Lou is four, and Minnie is 
ten going on eleven; can it be wondered that 
they looked up to her? 

She speaks darkly about herself. She has 
brothers and sisters better off than she is, some- 
where, who don’t want to speak to her when 
she meets them on the street! 

And she speaks darkly about the lady she 
lives with whom she calls Mis’ Snoble. “When 
Lisa Schmit from the grocery came to play 
with me, she shoo’d her off with the broom,” 
she said. 

Only yesterday she appeared at her gate for 
a brief moment to say she could not come out 
46 


Shades of the Prison House 


and play. “Mis’ Snoble’s feelin’ right up to 
the mark today; we’re goin’ to beat rugs an* 
wash winders.” 

But this morning as she pauses on her way 
home from the grocery, her communication to 
Izzy and Emmy Lou at Izzy’s gate is of dif- 
ferent import. “Mis’ Snoble’s not feelin’ up 
to the mark today. Come in with me an’ ask 
her an’ maybe she’ll let me come an’ play.” 

Go in with Minnie! To Mrs. Noble! Emmy 
Lou’s hand went into Izzy’s, as she for one 
gazed at Minnie appalled! 

Yet Minnie’s face is eager and her eyes im- 
plore. Her plaits are tied with calico, and her 
face behind its eagerness is thin. Izzy looses 
Emmy Lou’s hand, even as she draws it away, 
and, behold, his hand now is in one of Min- 
nie’s, and Emmy Lou’s is in the other. They 
are going with her to ask Mrs. Noble. 

Through Minnie’s gate, around by the side 
pavement, in at the kitchen door, through a 
47 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


hall and to another door. Mrs. Noble has not 
appeared yet with her broom to shoo them 
away, but she might! 

Minnie pushed this door open and led the 
way in — wonderful, brave Minnie! — but Izzy 
and Emmy Lou paused in the doorway. 

Mrs. Noble, spare and upright in her chair, 
crocheting, looked up. Her eyes, having swept 
up and down Minnie, traveled on to Emmy 
Lou and Izzy, then returned coldly, as it were, 
to her work. 

“Kitchen’s red up,” from Minnie eagerly 
and hopefully in what one supposed must be 
the language of over the river; “been to the 
grocery, an’ the sink’s clean.” 

If Mrs. Noble heard this she was above be- 
traying it. 

“Fire’s laid in the stove, but not lit.” 

Never a sign. 

“Potatoes peeled an’ in the saucepan wait- 


48 


Shades of the Prison House 


Mrs. Noble looked up. “One half-hour, or 
maybe three-quarters till I call.” 

And they were gone, Minnie first like a 
flash, Izzy next, no loiterer in the house of Mrs. 
Noble himself if he could help it and only the 
slower-paced because somebody had to wait for 
Emmy Lou. 

More wonderful day than it had been earlier, 
sunnier and less frosty. Minnie, whose wrap 
is disturbingly nearer a sacque than a coat in 
its scant nature, takes her place on the horse- 
block at the curb before Izzy’s house, and he 
and Emmy Lou take places either side of her. 

Minnie, wonderful Minnie, ten years old and 
over, knows it all. What, for instance? Ev- 
erything, anything. Such as this matter she 
brings up now of brothers and sisters. They 
are a bad lot. She says so. A sort to stop at 
nothing even to passing a poorer sister with- 
out knowing her on the street! As she went 
to the grocery with her bucket and oil-can just 
49 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


now, her brother passed her on the street. 
Minnie heard once of a man. When she takes 
this tone the time has come to draw closer. 
“. . . O’Rouke was this man’s name. He was 
rich and g-r-rand. So grand he didn’t know 
his own brothers when he met them on the 
street. An’ his brothers made up their minds 
they would go to his house an’ hide theirselves 
an’ watch him when he counted his money. It 
was a g-r-rand house. Over the mantelpiece 
was a picture of his dead mother. Over the 
piano was a picture of his dead father. Over 
the what-not was a picture of his wife. Over 
the sofa was a picture of hisself. An’ his four 
brothers came to hide theirselves an’ watch him 
count his money. The room was dark in all the 
corners. An’ one brother dumb up on the 
mantelpiece an’ hid hisself behind the picture 
of his mother, an’ cut holes th’ough the eyes so 
his eyes r-o-olling could look th’ough. An’ the 
next brother dumb up on the piano an’ hid his- 
50 


Shades of the Prison House 


self behind the picture of his father an’ cut 
holes th’ough the eyes so his eyes r-o-olling 
could look th’ough. An’ the next brother 
dumb up on the what-not an’ hid hisself be- 
hind the picture of the wife an’ ” 

Sister appeared around the side of Izzy’s 
house and came through the gate. Even 
though her finger was in her mouth, when she 
saw Minnie she looked provocative. 

“Go on with the brothers, Minnie,” begged 
Izzy. 

“Go on, Minnie,” begged Emmy Lou. 

But Minnie had no idea of resuming the 
brothers. Nobody, it would seem, could look 
provocative with impunity at her! 

“Nigger,” she said to Sister. 

But M’lissy, the mother of Sister, had her 
ready again. Did she send her around here 
for the purpose?” 

“Po’ white,” said Sister, taking her finger 
out of her mouth. “An’ worser. My mammy 
5 51 


Emmy Eon’s Road to Grace 


said to tell you so. You’re a n’ orphan” 

The solid ground of the accustomed gave 
way. Confusion followed. Minnie, hitherto 
the ready, the able, having sprung up to meet 
Sister’s onslaught, whatever it was to be, sank 
back on the horse-block, and hiding her face in 
her arms, cried, and more, at touch of the 
quickly solicitous arms of Izzy and Emmy 
Lou about her, she sobbed. 

Whereupon Emmy Lou arose, Emmy Lou 
in her stout little coat and her hood and her 
mittens ; and looking about her on the ground, 
found a switch full seven inches long, and with 
it drove Sister, little Sister, away, quite away. 
Had not Emmy Lou’s own aunties cast the 
initial doubt on Sister anyway? 

Then she came back to the horse-block. 
“What’s a n’orphan, Minnie?” Izzy was ask- 
ing. 

Emmy Lou wanted to know this very thing. 

“It’s livin’ with Mis’ Snoble an’ wearin’ her 


52 


Shades of the Prison House 


shoes when they’re too big for you,” sobbed 
Minnie. “ ’Taint as if anybody would be one 
if they could help theirselves.” 

“What makes you a n’orphan, then, Minnie, 
if you don’t want to be one?” from Izzy. 

“You’re a n’orphan when your mother goes 
to Heaven an * leaves you an’ forgets you,” bit- 
terly. 

Heaven? God paces his goodly walks there, 
between his sweet and pleasant flowers. But 
would your mother leave you to go there? And 
going, forget you? 

A window went up and Izzy’s mamma ap- 
peared. 

“Israel,” she called, “run in to the porch and 
give grandpa his cane and help him start into 
the house. It’s growing chill.” 

Minnie on the horse-block flung up her head 
and wiped away the tears. “That old man 
again!” she said. 

Did Minnie have ways? Ways that Aunt 
53 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 

Katie and Aunt Louise did not want their 
Emmy Lou to imitate? Was this one of her 

ways ? 

For Izzy’s grandpa of whom Minnie spoke 
disparagingly was he of the white brows and 
the flowing beard. On days such as this they 
helped him to the porch where he sat bundled 
in a chair in the sun, his cane beside him. 

Except when this cane was not, which was 
the trouble as Minnie saw it. For Izzy’s 
grandpa was forever letting his cane slide to 
the floor, yet could not get up, or down, or 
about, without it. 

Izzy ran in now. He was affectionate and 
dutiful. Aunt Cordelia said so. And having 
put the cane in his grandfather’s hand, though 
not without several eff orts at keeping it there, 
at which his grandfather, slowly — Oh, so slow- 
ly this morning! — and with trembling effort, 
drew him to him and kissed him, he came back. 

“Why did your mother go to Heaven and 
54 


Shades of the Prison House 


leave you and forget you, Minnie?” he asked. 

“Heaven’s a better place than this, if what 
they tell about it’s true,” bitterly. (C I ain't 
blamin' her for goin' , myself.” 

“Izzy,” came the call in a few moments 
again. “Did you tell grandpa to come in?” 

Izzy went running, for when he turned to 
look, the cane had slipped from his grand- 
father’s hand again and rolled to the foot of 
the steps, and his head above the snowy beard 
was fallen on his breast. Nor would he in this 
world lift it again, though none of the three 
grasped this. 

Aunt Cordelia was decided at the breakfast 
table the next morning. 

“They will not want you next door with 
Izzy today,” she told Emmy Lou. 

“Mayn’t he come here?” 

“I doubt if his mother will want him to come 
today.” 

The day following, however, Aunt Cordelia 
55 


Emmy Loiis Road to Grace 


and Aunt Katie went next door from the 
breakfast table and when they came back they 
brought Izzy with them, not for a while , but 
for the day . His dark eyes were trou- 
bled and his cheeks were pale. He was 
kindly and affectionate. Aunt Cordelia said 
so. 

And Aunt Cordelia agreed that after din- 
ner Bob could ask Mrs. Noble to let Minnie 
come over. 

“How can you, Sister Cordelia?” expostu- 
lated Aunt Louise. “A little servant girl!” 

Bob came back with Minnie. “For a nour,” 
she said as she arrived. “I can stay until the 
pork-house whistle blows for four.” 

She waited until Aunt Cordelia, having set- 
tled them in the sunny back room, went out 
the door. 

“What’s happened to your gran’pa?” then 
she said to Izzy. Did she say it not as if she 
did not know, but as if she did? 

56 


Shades of the Prison House 


“He’s gone to sleep,” said Izzy. “He won’t 
be sick or tired any more.” 

“Sleep?” from Minnie. “Haven’t they told 
you yet? We watched ’em start, Bob and I, 
before we came in.” 

Start? Start where? Izzy’s eyes, already 
troubled, were big and startled now. “Where’s 
grandpa going? Where’s my grandpa go- 
ing?” 

Did Minnie in some way imply that she 
knew more than she meant to tell? “To 
Heaven,” virtuously. “I’ve told you about 
it. That’s why he won’t be sick or tired any 
more. You ought to be glad. Here!” with 
quick change in tone. “Where you going? 
What’s the matter with you now? You can’t 
keep him back if you try!” 

But Izzy was gone. Nor when Minnie, who 
was nothing but a little servant girl after all, 
for Aunt Louise said so, ran after him, did he 
pause; only called back as he hurried down 
57 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


the stairs. He was a dutiful little boy, Aunt 
Cordelia said so. 

“If Grandpa has to go he’ll need his cane. 
He can’t get anywhere without his cane.” 

Emmy Lou, coming in through the kitchen 
from play, a week later, met Uncle Charlie 
in the hall just arriving by the front door. 

He neither spoke to her nor saw her as he 
overtook her on the lowest stair, but pushed 
by and hurried up. 

Emmy Lou’s heart swelled. It was not like 
Uncle Charlie. She clambered the curving 
flight after him. He had gone ahead into 
Aunt Cordelia’s room and she, on her way 
there herself, trudged after. 

What did it mean? Why did it frighten 
her? Aunt Katie, Aunt Louise, weeping? Un- 
cle Charlie now beside the fireplace, bowed 
against its shelf? This bit of yellow paper at 
his feet on the floor? 


58 


Shades of the Prison House 


Aunt Cordelia, weeping herself, would 
know. “What is it?” faltered Emmy Lou. 

Aunt Cordelia knew and held out her arms 
to the call. No evasions now ; truth for Emmy 
Lou. 

“Mamma will not be hack. She has gone 
ahead to Heaven. Come to Aunt Cordelia 
and let her comfort you, precious baby.” 

But Emmy Lou, still in her coat and hat, did 
not come ; she did not pause to dally. She hur- 
ried past the various hands outstretched to 
stay her, to her own little room adjoining. 

Complete her papier-mache satchel was, 
even to its clamps and straps, sitting beside 
her bed ready, her satchel which would hold 
a gown, and other treasure such as pewter 
dishes could she stop for such now. She 
dragged at a drawer of her own bureau. 

“What in the world ?” from Aunt Cor- 

delia, who had followed. 

“What are you doing- 
59 


?” from Aunt 


Emmy Lotos Road to Grace 


Katie and Aunt Louise, who had followed 
Aunt Cordelia. 

Emmy Lou knew exactly what she was do- 
ing. Izzy had known too when he went hurry- 
ing after. Minnie in her time, had she known, 
might have gone hurrying too. A nightgown, 
at her pull, trailed from the open drawer. 

Yet what was there in the faces about her 
to disturb her? To make her loose her hold on 
the gown, look from one to the other of them 
and falter? Uncle Charlie, too, had come into 
the room now. 

Were they casting doubts again? As they 
cast them on Sister who until then had in truth 
been a little sister? As they cast them on Min- 
nie who until then had been neither hired girl 
nor servant, but Minnie? Emmy Lou turned 
to Aunt Cordelia for corroboration. 

Even as she looked, she knew. We must 
learn a little more each day along the way, 
even as Aunt Cordelia had said. 

60 


Shades of the Prison House 


The nightgown trailing from her hand fell 
limply. The satchel, relinquished, rolled along 
the floor. Those goodly walks receded, their 
sweet and pleasant flowers drooped their list- 
less heads. Emmy Lou, nearing five years old, 
was a step further from heaven. 

“How shall we teach a little child?” said 
Aunt Cordelia, weeping. 

“How indeed?” said Uncle Charlie. 



Ill 

A FEW STRONG INSTINCTS AND 
A FEW PLAIN RULES 


Ill 


A FEW STRONG INSTINCTS AND A FEW PLAIN 
RULES 

Every exigency in life save one, for an 
Emmy Lou at six, seemingly is provided for 
by rules or admonition, the one which some- 
times is overlooked being lack of understand- 
ing. 

“ ‘Take heed that thou no murder do,’ ” was 
the new clause of the Commandments In 
Verse, she had recited at Sunday school only 
yesterday. 

“ ‘The way of the transgressor is hard,’ ” 
said Dr. Angell from his pulpit to her down 
in the pew between Uncle Charlie and Aunt 
Cordelia an hour later. Or she took it that he 
was saying it to her. For while one frequently 
65 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


fails to follow the words in this thing of ad- 
monition, there is no mistaking the manner. 
When she came into church with Uncle Char- 
lie and Aunt Cordelia, in her white pique coat 
and her leghorn hat, Dr. Angell had met her 
in the aisle and seemed glad to see her, even to 
patting her cheek, but once he was in his pul- 
pit he shook an admonishing finger at her and 
thundered. 

Nor did Emmy Lou, a big girl now for all 
she still was pink-cheeked and chubby, lack for 
admonitions at home from Aunt Cordelia and 
Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise above stairs, and 
Aunt M’randy in the kitchen below — a world 
of aunts, in this respect, it might have seemed, 
had Emmy Lou, faithful to those she deemed 
faithful to her, been one to think such 
things. 

Admonitions vary. Aunt Cordelia and 
Aunt M’randy drew theirs f^om the heart, so 
to put it. “When you mind what I say, you 
66 


A Few Strong Instincts 


are a good little girl. When you do not mind 
what I say, you are a bad little girl,” said Aunt 
Cordelia. 

“When I tell you to go on upstairs outer my 
way, I want you to go. When I tell you to 
take your fingers outen thet dough, I want you 
to take ’em out,” said Aunt M ’randy. Ad- 
monitions put in this way are entirely com- 
prehensible. There is no getting away from 
understanding mandates such as these. 

Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise drew their ad- 
monitions from a small, battered book given 
to them when they were little for their guid- 
ance and known as “Songs for the Little Ones 
at Home.” 

“O that it were my chief delight 
To do the thing I ought; 

Then let me try with all my might, 

To mind what I am taught,” 

said Aunt Katie. 


6 


67 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


“0 dear me, Emma, how is this? 

Your hands are very dirty, Miss; 

I don’t expect such hands to see 
When you come in to dine with me,” 

said Aunt Louise. 

Nor did Emmy Lou suspect that it was be- 
cause their advice did not come from the heart 
it reduced her to gloom ; that Aunt Katie and 
Aunt Louise delighted in it not because it was 
advice, but because it did reduce her to gloom ; 
that Aunt Katie, who was twenty-two, and 
Aunt Louise, who wa s twenty, did it to tease? 

Bob, the house-boy, too, had his line of 
ethics for her. And while he went to Sunday 
school, and to what he called Lodge, and had 
what he termed fun’ral insurance, observances 
all entitling him to standing, he pointed his 
warnings with dim survivals from an older, 
darker lore which someone wiser than Bob 
or Emmy Lou might have recognized as hoo- 
doo. Not that Bob or Emmy Lou either knew 
68 







K? 




/ 

ill - $ & 

v ' ■ -■• ■-> ■ ■■ jgy - 

■’ ■''8$feWi f &y- ■■■■■&* 


K >':, 


“ ‘They begun to peak, an’ then to pine. And still they 

wouldn’t mind. 


> yy 





A Few Strong Instincts 


this. Nor yet did Emmy Lou grasp that he 
to whom she was told to go for company a 
dozen times a day when the others wanted to 
get rid of her used the same to get rid of her 
himself. On the contrary, her faith in him 
being what it was, his warnings sank deep, the 
dire fates of his examples being guaranty for 
that. Moreover his examples came close home. 

The little girl who wouldn’t go play when 
they wanted to get rid of her. The little boy 
who would stay out visiting so late they had 
to send the house-boy after him. The little 
girl who wouldn’t go ’long when told to go, 
but would hang around the kitchen. Treated 
as a class by Bob, a class, so his gloomy head- 
shakings would imply, peculiarly fitting to his 
present company, their fates were largely simi- 
lar. 

“They begun to peak, an’ then to pine. An’ 
still they wouldn’t mind. Thar ha’r drapped 
out in the comb. An’ still they wouldn’t mind. 

69 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


Thar nails come loose. An’ still they wouldn’t 
mind. Thar teeth drapped out. But it wuz 
too late. When they tried to mind they 
couldn't mind!” 

• And while his audience might chafe beneath 
the almost too personal tone of these remarks, 
she dared not question them. Examples dire 
as Bob’s were vouched for every day. Only 
the Noahs were saved in the ark. Lot’s wife 
turned to a pillar of salt. The bear came out 
of the woods and ate the naughty children. 
Aunt Cordelia and Sunday school alike said 
so. The wicked sisters of Cinderella were 
driven out of the palace. Aunt Katie and 
Aunt Louise said so. The disobedient little 
mermaid was turned into foam. The little 
girl down at the corner, named Maud, who 
owned the book, said so. 

These things all considered, perhaps it came 
to be a matter of too many and cumulative ad- 
monishings with Emmy Lou. Naiure will 
70 


A Few Strong Instincts 


revolt at too steady a diet perhaps even of ad- 
monitions. Or it may be that even an Emmy 
Lou in time rebels, when elders so persistently 
refuse to recognize that there is another, an 
Emmy Lou’s side, to most affairs. 

For at six the peripatetic instinct has awak- 
ened and the urge within is to move on. 
Where? How does an Emmy Lou know? 
Anywhere so that the cloying performances 
of outgrown baby ways are behind her. 

Many whom she knew in the receded stages 
of five years old, and four, have moved on or 
away before this. Izzy who lived next door. 
Minnie who lived next to Izzy. Lisa Schmit 
whose father had the grocery at the corner but 
now has one at a corner farther away. 

And others have moved into Emmy Lou’s 
present ken. Mr. Dawkins has the grocery 
at the corner now, and his little girl is Maud, 
guarantor for the mermaid, and his big girl 
is Sarah, and his little boy is Albert Eddie. 
71 


Emmy Lou’s Road to Grace 


The peripatetic instinct impelling, Emmy 
Lou goes to see them as often as Aunt Cordelia 
will permit. 

There is fascination in going if one could 
but convey this to Aunt Cordelia in words. 
Any can live in houses; indeed most people 
do; or in Emmy Lou’s time did; but only the 
few live over a grocery. 

It argues these different. Mr. Schmit was 
German. Mr. Dawkins is English. At Emmy 
Lou’s, the teakettle, a vague part in family 
affairs, boils on the stove, but at Maud’s, the 
teakettle, a family affair of moment, boils on 
the “hob,” which is to say, the grate. And 
more, the father and mother of Maud and Al- 
bert Eddie not only have crossed that vague 
something, home of the little mermaid, the 
ocean, but their mother has all but seen the 
Queen. 

“You know the Queen?” the two had asked 
Emmy Lou anxiously. 

72 


A Few Strong Instincts 


And she had said yes. And she did know 
her. Knew her from long association and by 
heart. She sat in her parlor at the bottom of 
the page, eating bread and honey, while the 
maid and the blackbird were at the top of the 
next page. 

“Tell her about it,” Maud and Albert Ed- 
die then had urged Sarah, their elder sister, 
“about when mother all but saw the Queen i” 

Sarah complied. “ ‘Now hurry along home 
with your brother in the perambulator while I 
stop at the shop,’ mother’s mother said to her. 
Mother was twelve years old. But she didn*t 
hurry. She stopped to watch every one else 
all at once hurrying and running, and so when 
she reached the comer the Queen, for the 
Queen it was, had gone by.” 

“If she had minded her mother ” from 

Albert Eddie. 

“And hurried on home with the perambula- 
tor ” from Maud. Proof not only of a 

73 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


worthy attitude on their part towards the ad- 
monition of the tale, but of an evident com- 
prehension of what a perambulator was. 

But Aunt Cordelia, not always a free agent, 
was no longer permitting so much visiting. 

“You are letting her actually live on the 
street,” said Aunt Katie. 

“With any sort of children,” supplemented 
Aunt Louise. 

Undoubtedly Aunt Cordelia came the near- 
est to understanding there is another side to 
these affairs. “Sometimes I think she’s lone- 
some,” she said. 

“Those children who are all the day, 
Allowed to wander out, 

And only waste their time in play, 

Or running wild about ” 

said Aunt Katie. Aunt Louise finished it: 

“Who do not any school attend, 

But trifle as they will, 

74 


A Few Strong Instincts 


Are almost certain in the end, 

To come to something ill.” 

And while it almost would seem that Aunt 
Cordelia was being admonished too, and from 
the little book, in the light of what followed, 
it appeared that Aunt Katie, Aunt Louise, and 
the little book were right. 

The day in question started wrong. In the 
act of getting out of bed, life seemed a heavy 
and a listless thing. If Emmy Lou, less pink- 
cheeked than usual if any had chanced to no- 
tice, but full as chubby, ever had felt this way 
before, she would have told Aunt Cordelia that 
her head ached. But if the head never has 
ached before? 

Her attention was distracted here, anyhow, 
and she, startled, let her tongue pass along 
the row of her teeth. Milk teeth, those who 
knew the term would have called them. There 
is much, however, that an Emmy Lou, one 
small person in a household of elders, is sup- 
75 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


posed to know that she does not, knowledge 
coming not by nature but through understand- 
ing. 

Then, reassured, her attention came back to 
the affairs of the moment, the chief of these 
being that life is a heavy and listless affair and 
the labyrinthine windings of stockings more 
than ever fretting in effect upon the temper. 
And after stockings come garments, ending 
with the pink calico dress apportioned to the 
day, and succeeding garments come buttons. 
Aunt Katie in the next room was cheerful. 

“I love to see a little girl 
Rise with the lark so bright, 

Bathe, comb and dress with cheerful face 99 

One was in no mood whatever for the little 
book, and showed it. Aunt Louise in the 
next room too, possibly grasped this. 

“Why is Sarah standing there 
Leaning down upon a chair, 

76 


A Tew Strong Instincts 


With such an angry lip and brow, 

I wonder what’s the matter now?” 

Aunt Cordelia was struggling with the but- 
tons. “Let her alone, both of you. Sometimes 
I think you are half responsible.” 

The outrages of the day went on at break- 
fast. Emmy Lou’s once prized highchair, a 
tight fit now, and which, could she have had 
her own way, would have been repudiated some 
time ago, was in itself provocative. She 
climbed into it stonily. 

Bob placed a saucer before her. If she ever 
had suffered the qualms of an uneasy stomach 
before, she would have known and told Aunt 
Cordelia. 

“I don’t want my oatmeal,” said Emmy 
Lou. 

“You must eat it before you can have any- 
thing else,” said Aunt Cordelia. 

“I don’t want anything else.” 

“She’s fretful,” said Aunt Katie. 

77 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


“She’s cross,” said Aunt Louise. 

“I am coming to think you are right, Lou- 
ise,” said Aunt Cordelia. “What she needs 
is to be at school with other children. School 
opens the day after tomorrow, and I’ll start 
her.” 

“This baby?” from Uncle Charlie incredu- 
lously, his gaze seeking Emmy Lou in her 
highchair. 

“Look at that oatmeal still untouched,” from 
Aunt Cordelia. “Charlie, she is getting so she 
doesn't want to mind!” 

The outrages went on during the morning. 
Emmy Lou did not know what to do with her- 
self, whereas Aunt Cordelia had a great deal 
to do with herself. “You little hindering 
thing!” by and by from that person with ex- 
asperation. “Go on out and talk with Bob. 
He’s cleaning knives on the kitchen door- 
step.” 

But Bob, occupied with his board and bath- 
78 


A Few Strong Instincts 


brick and piece of raw potato, had no idea of 
talking with her. He talked to himself. 

“ Seems like I done forgot how it went, ’bout 
thet li’l boy whut would stan’ roun’ listenin’. 
Some’n’ like ’bout thet li’l girl whut wouldn’t 

go about her bus’ness ” 

Gathering up his knives and board, he went 
in to set his table. Turning around by and by 
he found her behind him in the pantry. He 
talked to himself some more. 

“Reckon is I done forgot how it went? 
’Bout thet li’l girl got shet up in the pantry 
after they tol’ her to keep out? She knowed 
ef she coughed they’d hear an’ come an’ fin’ 
her thar. An’ she hed to cough. An’ she 
wouldn’t cough. An’ she hed to. An’ she 
wouldn’t. An’ she hed to. An’ she DID. 
But it wuz too late. The pieces of her wuz 
ev’ey whar, even to the next spring when they 
wuz house-cleanin’, an’ foun’ her knuckle-bone 
on the fur top shelf. Looks lak to me, some- 
79 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


body else is gettin’ ready for a good lesson. 
Better watch out.” 

The final outrage was yet to come. At the 
close of dinner Emmy Lou came round to 
Aunt Cordelia’s chair. Aunt Cordelia was 
worn out. She had never known her Emmy 
Lou to behave as she had in the last day or so. 

“Now don’t come asking me again,” she 
said, forestalling the issue. “I’ve gone over 
the matter with you several times before to- 
day. You cannot go play with anybody. No, 
not with Maud at the corner or anybody else.” 
Then to Uncle Charlie, shaking his head over 
this unwonted friction as he rose to start back 
down town: “They tell me there is whooping- 
cough around everywhere, Charlie.” Then to 
Emmy Lou: “Now try and be a good girl 
for the rest of the day. Aunt Cordelia will 
have her hands full. It is Bob’s afternoon out. 
Try and be Aunt Cordelia’s precious baby.” 

But Emmy Lou, her tongue traveling the 
80 


A Few Strong Instincts 


row of her teeth anew, didn’t propose to be 
anybody’s precious baby. She was a big girl, 
now, almost six years old, and wanted it rec- 
ognized that she was. And she didn’t feel good 
in the least, but like being quite the reverse for 
the rest of the day. 

This was at two o’clock. At three Aunt 
Cordelia’s own Emmy Lou, the pink calico 
upon her person and a straw hat upon her 
head, turned the knob of the front door. Hav- 
ing obeyed thus far in life, she was about to 
disobey. 

The front door, its knob requiring both 
hands and her tiptoes, whereas the kitchen door 
would have been open. But Aunt M’randy 
was in the kitchen. 

As it chanced, Bob was leaving by the 
kitchen door, and coming around by the side 
pavement as Emmy Lou came down the steps, 
they met. His idea seemed to be that she was 
tagging after him, an injury in itself when 
81 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 

she divined it. He was of the same mind evi- 
dently when a moment later she was still be- 
side him outside the gate. 

He paused and addressed the air disparag- 
ingly before he went. “Looks like to me I’ll 
have to bresh up my ricollection ’bout thet li’l 
girl whut would come outside her own gate 
after she was tole not to come. Spoilin’ for 
one good lesson, thet li’l girl wuz, an’ ’pears 
like to me she got it. Better watch out.” And 
Bob was gone, up the street, whereas it was 
the definite intention of the other person at 
that gate to go down the street. 

Mr. Dawkins’ grocery fronted on the main 
street while his housedoor opened on the side- 
street. A few moments later a small figure in 
a familiar pink dress and straw hat reached 
this side door, and, pausing long enough for 
her tongue to pass uneasily along the row of 
her teeth, opened it upon a flight of stairs and 
went in. 


82 


A Few Strong Instincts 


Five o’clock it was and after when Mr. 
Dawkins’ eldest daughter Sarah, followed by 
Maud and Albert Eddie, came down these 
steps propelling a visitor in a pink dress and 
straw hat, a visitor known from the Dawkins’ 
viewpoint as that little girl from up the street 
in the white house that get their groceries 
from Schmit. 

Perhaps this fact explained Sarah’s small 
patience with this person who in herself would 
seem to invite it. She not only was pale, and 
her lips pressed with unnatural while miserable 
firmness together, but her eyes, uplifted when 
Sarah most undeniably shook her, were an- 
guished. 

“If you’d open your mouth and speak,” said 
Sarah with every indication of shaking her 
again. 

A stout gentleman coming along the side 
street which led from a car-line crossed over 
hastily. 


7 


83 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


“Here, here! And what for?” Uncle Char- 
lie asked with spirit. 

Sarah looked up at him. With her long, 
tidy plaits and her tidy person she conveyed 
the impression that she was to be depended 
on. Maud looked up at him. With her small 
tidy plaits and her tidy person she conveyed 
the impression that she was to be depended 
on, too. 

Albert Eddie looked up. Mr. Dawkins was 
to be congratulated on his family. There was 
dependability in every warm freckle of Albert 
Eddie’s face. 

Emmy Lou, Uncle Charlie’s own Emmy 
Lou, had been looking up the while, anguished. 
She was a reliable person in general herself, or 
Uncle Charlie always had found her so. 

“If she’d open her mouth and speak,” said 
Sarah. “Half an hour ago by the clock it was, 
she gave a sound, and I turned, and here she 
was like this.” 


84 


A Few Strong Instincts 


“Sister was telling us a story ” from Al- 

bert Eddie. 

“The story of naughty Harryminta ” 

from Maud. 

“No use your trying, sir,” from Sarah. 
“I’ve been trying for half an hour. We’re 
taking her home.” 

“Excellent idea.” He took Emmy Lou’s 
little hands. “So you won’t tell Uncle Charlie 
either?” 

Evidently she would not, though it was with 
visible increase of anguish that she indicated 
this by a shake of her head. 

“We’ll walk along,” said Sarah. “I’ve my 
part of supper to get, but we’ll feel better our- 
selves to see her home.” 

They walked along. 

“I was talking to them peaceful as might 
be ” from Sarah again. 

“Sister was telling us a story ” from Al- 

bert Eddie. 


85 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


“The story of naughty Harryminta ” 

from Maud. 

Was it a sound here from Uncle Charlie’s 
Emmy Lou, or the twitch of her hand in his, 
which betrayed some access to her woe? 

“And what was the story?” asked Uncle 
Charlie. It might afford a clue. 

Maud volunteered it. “The little girl’s 
mother said to her, ‘Don’t.’ And her name was 
Harryminta. And when she got back from 
doing what she was told not to do, her mother 
was waiting for her at the door. ‘Whose lit- 
tle girl is this ?’ And Harryminta said, ‘Why, 
it’s your little girl.’ But her mother shook 
her head. ‘Not my little girl at all. My little 
girl is a good little girV And shut the door.” 

“Talk about your coincidence,” said Uncle 
Charlie afterward. “Talk about your Nemesis 
and such!” 

F or as the group came along the street — the 
Dawkins family, Uncle Charlie, and Emmy 
86 


A Few Strong Instincts 


Lou — and turned in at the gate, Aunt Cordelia 
flung the front door open. Aunt Katie and 
Aunt Louise were behind her. They had really 
just missed Emmy Lou. 

“Whose little girl is this?” said Aunt Cor- 
delia, severely. But not going as far as the 
mother of Araminta she did not shut the door. 
Instead, Sarah explained. 

“Half an hour ago by the clock ” Sarah 

began. 

They led her into the hall, and Aunt Cor- 
delia lifted her up on the marble slab of the 
pier table. Aunt Cordelia’s admonitions and 
mandates came from the heart. “Open your 
mouth and speak out and tell me what’s the 
matter?” 

Emmy Lou opened her mouth, and in the 
act, though visibly against her stoutest en- 
deavor even to an alarming accession of pink 
to her face, ominously and unmistakably — 
whooped; the same followed on her part by 
87 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


the full horror of comprehension, and then by 
a wail. 

For with that whoop the worst had hap- 
pened. As with the little boys and girls in 
Bob’s dire category of naughty little boys 
and girls, her sin had found her out indeed. 

“I’m coming to pieces,” wailed their terri- 
fied Emmy Lou, “because I didn’t mind.” 

And according to her understanding she 
was, since after her vain endeavor for half an 
hour by Sarah’s clock to hold it in place with 
tongue and lips, in her palm lay a tooth, the 
first she had shed or known she had to shed, 
knowledge coming not by nature but through 
understanding. 

Aunt Cordelia did not carry out her 
program the day school opened. There was 
whooping-cough at her house, and a day or 
so after there was whooping-cough at Mr. 
Dawkins’. 

“He is very indignant about it,” Aunt Cor- 
88 


A Few Strong Instincts 


delia told Uncle Charlie. “He stopped me as 
I came by this morning from my marketing. 
He said it wasn’t even as though we were cus- 
tomers.” 

“Which is the least we can be after this, I’m 
sure you will agree,” said Uncle Charlie. 

Just here in the conversation, Emmy Lou, 
miserable and stuffy in a pink sacque over her 
habitual garb because Aunt Cordelia most em- 
phatically insisted, whooped. 

“Those good little girls, Marianne and Maria, 
Were happy and well as good girls could desire — ” 

said Aunt Louise. 

Aunt Cordelia, approaching with a bottle 
and spoon as she did after every cough, shook 
her head. “Little girls who mind are good 
little girls,” she said. 

“Emmy Lou is learning to be a good little 
girl while she is shut up in the house sick,” 
said Aunt Katie. “She knows all of her Com- 
89 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


mandments In Verse for Sunday school now. 
Let Aunt Cordelia wipe the cough-syrup off 
your mouth and say them for Uncle Charlie 
before he goes.” 

Emmy Lou learning to be a good little girl 
said them obediently. 

“Thou shalt have no more gods but me; 

Before no idol bow thy knee. 

Take not the name of God in vain, 

Nor dare the Sabbath day profane. 

Give both thy parents honor due, 

Take heed that thou no murder do. 

Abstain from deeds and words unclean, 

Nor steal though thou art poor and mean; 

Nor make a willful lie nor love it, 

What is thy neighbor’s, dare not covet.” 

Aunt Cordelia, Aunt Katie and Aunt 
Louise looked pleased. Emmy Lou had said 
the verses without stumbling. Uncle Charlie 
looked doubtful. “Five words with under- 
standing rather than ten thousand in an un- 
known tongue? How about it, Cordelia?” 

90 


A Few Strong Instincts 


But Bob, bringing Emmy Lou’s dinner up- 
stairs to her on a tray, had the last disturbing 
word. “Been tryin’ to riccollect how it went, 
’bout thet li’l girl kep’ her tongue outer the 
place whar her tooth drapped out, so’s a new 
tooth would grow in.” 




THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE 





IV 


THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE 

Uncle Charlie took six blue tickets from 
his pocket and set them on the dining-room 
mantel. His ownership of a newspaper was 
the explanation for this liberality of supply 
to those who could put the two things to- 
gether. 

“I wonder,” said he, “if anybody in this 
room ever heard of the circus?” 

Emmy Lou could not get down from her 
place at the dinner-table fast enough. She hur- 
ried to the kitchen. She had heard of the cir- 
cus from Bob the house-boy, who had a circus 
bill! 

Bills, as a rule, are small affairs measurable 
in inches; bits of paper which reduce Aunt 
95 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


Cordelia to figurings with a lead pencil, short 
replies, and low spirits. 

But a circus bill, pink and pictorial, is meas- 
urable in feet. As Bob spread his on the 
kitchen table yesterday and again this morn- 
ing, it fell either side well on the way to the 
floor. Its wonders, inexplicable where he, 
spelling out the text, forebore to explain, or 
explicable where he did if one knew no better 
than he, were measurable only by the limits 
of the mind to take them in. If Emmy Lou, 
who started to school last fall three weeks late 
owing to a popular prejudice against whoop- 
ing-cough, had caught up as Aunt Cordelia 
easily assumed she would, or “caught on,” in 
the words of Uncle Charlie, she might have 
been spelling out some of the wonders of the 
circus bill for herself. 

Bob’s finger had paused beneath a lady in 
myriad billowing skirts poised mid-air between 
a horse and a hoop such as Emmy Lou spent 
96 


The Tribunal of Conscience 


hours trying to trundle on the sidewalk. “She’s 
jumpin’ th’ough the hoop, but thet ain’t 
nothin’. Heah in the other picture she’s 
jumpin’ th’ough six.” 

Emmy Lou, hurrying to the kitchen now 
and finding Bob about to start in with the soup, 
borrowed the bill and hurried back with it to 
the dining-room and Uncle Charlie’s side. 

“This one’s an elephant,” she explained, her 
finger, even as Bob’s, beneath the picture. “He 
picks little children up and puts them in his 
trunk.” 

“I see you know, though some do call it his 
howdah,” said Uncle Charlie. “And no doubt 
about the lions and the tigers, the giraffe and 
the zebra as well?” regretfully. “Even the 
lemonade?” 

“Lemonade?” 

“Pink. And peanuts.” Uncle Charlie mo- 
tioned to Bob to put his soup down and have 
done with it, as it were. “Also Nella, The 
97 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


Child Equestrienne in Her Triumphal Entry 
— here she is. And Zephine, the Wingless 
Wonder, in Her Flight Through the Air ” 

“Am I going to the circus?” from Emmy 
Lou. 

“That’s what I hoped,” from Uncle Charlie, 
handing back the bill and turning to his soup. 
“But of course if there is room for doubt 
about it ” 

The very next day Emmy Lou came hurry- 
ing home from Sunday school. She had the 
Dawkins, Sarah, the conscientious elder sister, 
Maud, and Albert Eddie, for company as far 
as the grocery at the corner. Since Aunt 
Cordelia had learned they were English, ap- 
parent explanation for those who understood, 
they had been persuaded to go to St. Simeon’s 
Sunday school too. 

Sunday school was to have a — Emmy Lou 
in her Sunday dress and her Sunday hat, hur- 
rying on from the corner by herself, tried to 
98 


The Tribunal of Conscience 


straighten this out before reaching home and 
reporting it. What was it Sunday school was 
to have? In Uncle Charlie’s study — a small 
back room somewhat battered and dingy but, 
as he claimed in its defense, his own — was a 
picture of a stout little man propelled in a 
wheelbarrow by some other men. 

Emmy Lou had discovered that Uncle Char- 
lie loved the little man and prized the picture.. 
When she asked who he was and where he 
was going in the wheelbarrow, Uncle Charlie 
said it was Mr. Pickwick going to a picnic. 
Or, and here was the trouble, was it Mr. Picnic 
going to a pickwick? It depended on this what 
Sunday school was to have. 

Uncle Charlie, hat and cane in hand, waiting 
in the hall for Aunt Cordelia to start to church, 
straightened out the matter. Mr. Pickwick 
was going to a picnic. It then followed that 
Emmy Lou, in general a brief person, had such 
a store of information about the picnic she 
8 99 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


was moved to share it with Uncle Charlie. 
This common interest about the circus and their 
recurring conversations about it were drawing 
them together, anyhow. Her data about the 
picnic on the whole was menacing in its char- 
acter. As, for example: 

It was to be in Mr. Denby’s grove. He 
charged too much for it, but St. Simeon’s could 
not do any better. If you went too far away 
from the swings and the benches the mamma 
of some little pigs would chase you. 

Further. You cannot go to St. Simeon’s 
picnic, or, indeed, to any picnic without a bas- 
ket! Emmy Lou had endeavored to find out 
what sort of a basket and Sarah had cut her 
short with the brief reply, “A picnic basket.” 

And, finally, “Albert Eddie wishes he’d 
never started to St. Simeon’s. Sarah says he 
has to go to the picnic and he wants to go to 
the circus!” 

Aunt Cordelia arriving in full church ar- 
il 00 


The Tribunal of Conscience 


ray caught this last. “I’ve been meaning to 
speak about it myself. I find the circus is 
here for the one day only and that the day for 
St. Simeon’s picnic.” 

Emmy Lou received this as applying to the 
Dawkins only. The information her inquiries 
had enabled her to get together led her per- 
sonally to disparage picnics. 

“Albert Eddie says Sarah made him wash 
dishes at the last picnic he went to. And she 
makes him carry baskets. That if he’d wash 
dishes for ’em at the circus and carry water, 
they’d let him in.” 

“Sarah, Maud, Albert Eddie, you, me, and 
one ticket to spare; such was my idea,” said 
Uncle Charlie, he and Aunt Cordelia prepar- 
ing to start. “The only thing we’ve ever given 
the Dawkins up to date is the whooping- 
cough. Picnic or circus, duty or pleasure, 
we’ll have to put it to them which they want 
it to be.” 


101 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


Aunt Cordelia, even at the risk of being late 
to church, stopped short. She didn’t see the 
matter in any such fashion at all! “Emmy 
Lou will prefer to go to her own Sunday 
school picnic too, I hope,” decidedly. “How 
you distract and bother the child, Charlie!” 

“I bother Emmy Lou? She and I are as 
near good friends as people get to be. We 
respect each other’s honesty and go our own 
ways. I am going to leave the tickets where 
I put them yesterday. I planned to take her 
and the Dawkins to the circus. You and she 
can fight it out.” He proceeded through the 
open doorway to the stone steps. 

“In that case,” from Aunt Cordelia as she 
followed him, “since you seem to put me in 
the wrong, I leave it to her own conscience. 
She is seven years old, a big girl going to 
school and Sunday school, and ought to know 
right from wrong.” And the two were gone. 

Conscience! Familiar shibboleth to the sev- 
102 


The Tribunal of Conscience 


enth age of little girls! Stern front behind 
which Aunt Cordelia these days hides her kind- 
ly features. 

Somewhere beyond the neighborhood where 
Emmy Lou lived with Aunt Cordelia and 
Uncle Charlie, was the roundhouse and the 
yards of a railroad. Or so Aunt Cordelia ex- 
plained. The roundhouse bell, rung every 
hour by the watchman on his rounds, made 
far-off melancholy tolling through the night. 

The sins at seven, the chubby, endeavoring 
Emmy Lou’s sins, her cloak on the coat-closet 
floor instead of the closet peg, mucilage on 
Aunt Katie’s rug where a paper outspread 
before pasting began would have saved it — 
sins such as these have no prod to reminder 
more poignant than this melancholy tolling of 
the roundhouse bell in the night. 

“It is an uneasy conscience,” Aunt Cordelia 
invariably claimed when Emmy Lou, waking, 
came begging for permission to get in her bed. 

103 


'Emmy Lotts Road to Grace 


“If your conscience was all that it should be, 
you’d be asleep.” 

Yet did Aunt Cordelia, as a rule, leave those 
matters to Emmy Lou’s conscience which she 
thought she did? Did Emmy Lou three out 
of four Sundays find herself remaining at 
church rather than on her road home because 
she herself wanted to stay? Or taking off her 
new dress on reaching home because she 
wanted to get into the older one? 

Or, rather, did she find her baffled if unsus- 
pecting self, coerced and bewildered, doing 
these and other things in the name of choice 
when the doing was not through choice at all? 

Aunt Cordelia was going to leave the deci- 
sion between the circus and the picnic to Emmy 
Lou, too, because she said she was. Nor did 
Aunt Cordelia, honest soul, or Emmy Lou, 
unquestioning and trusting one, dream but that 
she did. 

“I’ll see Sarah Dawkins,” said Aunt Cor- 
104 


The Tribunal of Conscience 


delia to Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise the very 
next morning, “and arrange with her to look 
after Emmy Lou at the picnic. We’ll use the 
small hamper for her basket. She can take 
enough for herself and them. Bob can take her 
and it around to the church corner where the 
chartered street cars are to be waiting, and 
put her in Sarah’s charge there. I can’t see, 
Katie, why you oppose a cake with custard 
filling for the basket.” 

“It’s messy,” said Aunt Katie, “both to take 
and to eat.” 

“But if she likes it best?” from Aunt Cor- 
delia. 

It was the first thing come to Emmy Lou’s 
hearing lending appeal to the picnic; or light 
on the purpose of the baskets. 

Uncle Charlie arriving for dinner out- 
matched it, however, by another appeal. “I 
saw a new circus bill on the fence of the va- 
cant lot as I came by. A yellow bill.” 

105 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


Emmy Lou hurried right down there from 
the dinner-table. Nella, the Child Eques- 
trienne, was kissing her hand right to Emmy 
Lou from her horse’s back. And the elephant, 
abandoning his customary dark business of 
putting little children in his trunk, with unex- 
pected geniality was sitting on a stool before 
a table drinking tea. 

And the next day Bob outmatched this. He 
had been to the grocery to see about chickens 
for the picnic to which Emmy Lou ought to 
want to go. 

“There’s a Flyin’ Dutchman on the outside, 
an’ side-shows too. I seen about it on a bill 
the other side of the grocery. A green bill.” 

Emmy Lou hurried down there. She didn’t 
see anything that she could identify as a Fly- 
ing Dutchman, perhaps because she was hazy 
as to what a Dutchman was. But Zephine, 
swinging by her teeth , was just leaping into 
space. 


106 


The Tribunal of Conscience 


“I think I will let her wear her sprigged 
muslin,” said Aunt Cordelia at supper that 
night. “A good many grown persons go in 
the afternoon.” 

“Their excuse being to take the chil- 
dren ” from Uncle Charlie easily. 

“I am not talking of the circus, Charlie, and 
you know I am not,” from Aunt Cordelia 
sharply. 

“She has decided then?” 

“She certainly ought to have decided. There 
never should have been any doubt. I’ll put 
in some little tarts, Katie; all children like 
tarts.” 

Had Emmy Lou decided? She heard it as- 
sumed that she had. Why, then, with this 
sense of frustration and bewilderment was she 
swallowing at tears? 

“I certainly feel I may say Emmy Lou has 
decided,” repeated Aunt Cordelia. “I’m sure, 
Katie, tarts are just the thing.” 

107 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


“I’ll never believe it,” said Uncle Charlie, 
emphatically, nor was he referring to the 
tarts. 

Did he refuse to be party to any such idea ? 

“I would not be surprised,” said he to Emmy 
Lou the next evening, “if we hear the circus 
rumbling by in the night. Our street is the 
one they usually take from the railroad yards 
to the circus-grounds. I put six tickets on 
the mantelpiece where at the most we will need 
only five. Suppose I take one and see what 
I can do with it?” 

“Emmy Lou has no idea but of going to 
her own Sunday school picnic,” said Aunt Cor- 
delia. “I wish, Charlie, you would be still 
about your tickets and the circus.” 

“They are not my tickets. They are going 
to stay right here. I merely was to go with 
Emmy Lou on one of them. They are her 
tickets to do with as she wants and to take 
whom she pleases.” 


108 


The Tribunal of Conscience 


Though the circus did go by in the night, 
according to report next morning, Emmy Lou 
failed to hear it. Nor did the melancholy 
of the tolling bell disturb her. Aunt Cor- 
delia said this was because she was going to 
her Sunday school picnic as she should, and 
had a quiet conscience. 

“I come roun’ by the circus as I come to 
work,” Bob said in the pantry where Aunt 
Cordelia and he packed the basket with Emmy 
Lou for spectator. “Gittin’ them wagons with 
the lookin’-glass sides ready for the perade. 
Thet ol’ elephant come swinging erlong like 
he owned the y’earth. Mr. Charlie gimme a 
ticket las’ night to go.” 

Which reminded Emmy Lou. Even though 
she was going to the picnic, there was comfort 
in the thought those tickets yet on the mantel- 
piece were hers. She went into the dining- 
room and pushed a chair to the hearth. The 
sprigged muslin she was to wear had a pocket, 
109 


Emmy Lous Bond to Grace 


and later when this dress was put on the tickets 
which were her own were in the pocket. 

If one never has been to a picnic the only 
premises to go on are those given you. 

“You haven’t a thing to do but stay with 
Maud and Albert Eddie, and mind Sarah,” 
said Aunt Cordelia as she put Emmy Lou’s 
hat on her head and its elastic under her chin, 
“except, of course, to look after your basket. 
There is pink icing on the little cakes and a 
good tablecloth that I don’t want anything to 
happen to under the beaten biscuits at the bot- 
tom. There is ham and there’s tongue and 
there’s chicken.” 

“I have to look after the basket,” Emmy 
Lou told Sarah as she and the Dawkins with 
the rest of St. Simeon’s Sunday school were 
put aboard the excursion cars. 

“Of course you do,” said Sarah approvingly. 
“We all do. It’s right here. And,” with the 
heartiness of one distributing largesse in priv- 
110 


The Tribunal of Conscience 


ileges, the meanwhile settling her three charges 
in their places, “when we get off the car Albert 
Eddie shall carry it.” 

Emmy Lou had a seat between Albert Eddie 
and Maud. Beyond Albert Eddie were three 
little boys in knickerbockers, blouses, and straw 
hats, as gloomy in face as he. 

“Not only let him carry water for the ele- 
phant but gave him a ticket for doing it,” the 
nearest one was saying to the other three. 
“Had it with him when he got back. I saw 
it myself. He lemme take it in my hand. A 
blue ticket.” 

“Right past the circus grounds, tents and 
all,” from the second little boy as their car 
came in sight of the beflagged tent city. “I’ll 
betcher they’re gettin’ ready for the parade 
right now!” 

Four glittering, turbaned beings appeared 
around a tent, each leading a plumed and 
caparisoned horse to a place before a gilded 
111 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


and high-throned edifice. “Didn’t I tell you 
they were?” bitterly. A band crashed. 

The heads of St. Simeon’s Sunday school, 
regardless of danger, craned out as one. The 
more venturesome left their seats. 

St. Simeon’s chartered cars rolled inex- 
orably by. Heads came in. The venturesome 
returned to their places. 

“What is there to a picnic anyhow?” from 
the third little boy. “Nothin’ at all but what 
you eat.” 

Albert Eddie staggered under the weight 
of the basket when in time the car stopped on 
the track along the dusty road outside Mr. 
Denby’s grove. But then one out of every 
two persons descending from the several cars 
was similarly staggering under the weight of 
a basket. 

Sarah and Maud, with Emmy Lou led by 
either hand between them, followed Albert Ed- 
die with their own. After which, St. Simeon’s, 
112 


The Tribunal of Conscience 


having brought all baskets to a common center 
beneath a tree in the neighborhood of the ice- 
water barrel, went off and left them. 

“Fm going with a little girl who asked me,” 
Maud told Sarah. “We won’t go too far or 
the mother of the little pigs will chase us.” 

“Albert Eddie, I told the ladies that you 
would get the wood for a fire so we can put 
the coffee on,” said Sarah. “When you come 
back from that you can take the bucket and 
bring us the ice-water from the barrel for the 
lemonade.” 

Sarah’s glance came next to Emmy Lou, no 
mixer in the world of Sunday school at best, as 
Sarah before this had observed. Sarah frowned 
perturbedly. Some are picnickers by intui- 
tion, for example Maud and the little girl 
gone off together; others come to it through 
endeavor. It was seven-year-old Emmy Lou’s 
first picnic, and she in her sprigged muslin 
stood looking to Sarah. 

113 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


Sarah was a manager, but having yet to 
manage for Emmy Lou her frown was per- 
turbed. Then her face cleared. She fetched a 
flat if a trifle over-mossy stone and put it down 
on the outskirts of the baskets grouped beneath 
the sheltering tree, and near the ice- water bar- 
rel. “There, now! You can sit down here 
and look after the baskets till I get back,” she 
told Emmy Lou and was gone. 

There is virtue in coming to a picnic. Aunt 
Cordelia plainly gave one to understand so. 

“Why don’t you go play with the others, 
little girl?” asked a lady who was tying on a 
gingham apron as she hurried by. “Go over 
to the swings and see-saws.” 

But Emmy Lou, no picnicker by intuition, 
nor as yet by any other mode of arrival, was 
grateful that she had to stay with the baskets, 
and, had the lady paused long enough for a 
reply, could say so. 

Was there virtue in coming to the picnic 

114 


The Tribunal of Conscience 


for Albert Eddie too? Emmy Lou on her 
stone under the tree guarding baskets saw 
him come back with his load of firewood. She 
saw him next carrying the bucket of water from 
the barrel. 

And here some ladies approaching the bas- 
kets beside Emmy Lou beneath the tree, and 
casting appraising eyes over the outlay, began 
to help themselves to the same! To this bas- 
ket, and that basket, and carry them away! 
One even approached and laid hands on Emmy 
Lou’s own ! It took courage to speak, but she 
found it. 

“It’s mine,” from Emmy Lou. 

“And just the very nicest looking one I have 
seen,” said the lady heartily after raising the 
lid and probing into the contents. “Anyone 
would be glad to say it was hers,” and went off 
with it! St. Simeon’s with a commendable 
sense of fellowship made a common feast from 
its picnic baskets at long tables for all, but 
9 115 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


Emmy Lou did not know this. She only saw 
her cake with the custard filling, her cakes 
with the pink icing, her tarts, her ham and 
tongue, her chicken and biscuits and table- 
cloth borne off from her with a coolness as- 
tounding and appalling. 

Virtue is hers who dully endures a picnic. 
Emmy Lou, coming out of her stun and daze 
and seeing some little boys approaching, the 
ice-water barrel being a general Mecca, swal- 
lowed hard that, did they notice her, they 
might not see how near she was to crying. 
Three little boys in knickerbockers, blouses, 
and straw hats they were, still with their com- 
mon air of being more than justifiably ag- 
grieved. 

They noticed her and at the abrupt halt of 
one, all stopped. 

“We saw her on the car,” he said. “What's 
she got?" 

For Emmy Lou’s hand some time since had 
116 


The Tribunal of Conscience 


brought forth for comfort from her pocket 
the blue tickets which were her own. That 
hand closed on them at the question now. She’d 
just seen her basket go! 

“Are they circus tickets? Sure? Lemme 
see them? Aw, what you scared of, lettin’ me 
see ’em in my hand?” 

Emmy Lou did not know just what. The 
ways of a picnic and those attending were new 
to her, but what she had learned discouraged 
confidence. Her hand and the tickets in it 
went behind her. 

“Where’d she get ’em?” the boy asked now 
of Albert Eddie, arriving with his bucket for 
more water. 

He set the bucket down by the barrel and 
joined the group. 

“Do you s’pose they are really hers?” was 
the query put to him as he got there. 

Emmy Lou knew Albert Eddie, had known 
him for a long time as time is measured at 
117 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


seven years. He looked after her on the way 
to and from Sunday school even though he did 
it at Sarah’s bidding, whereas Maud forgot 
her. Moreover, he had not wanted to come to 
the picnic, and, bond firmly established be- 
tween them, neither had she. She surrendered 
her tickets into his hands to be inspected. She 
even credentialed them. The others had 
doubted them! “They’re mine. My Uncle 
Charlie said so. To take anybody I wanted to 
take if I hadn’t had to come here!” 

Her tickets! Five by actual count and ac- 
tual touch! To do what she pleased with! 
This plump little girl with the elastic of her 
hat under her chin, sitting alone at the picnic 
on a stone! 

The conversation in the group became choric 
and to some extent Delphic, Emmy Lou, with 
her eyes on the tickets in Albert Eddie’s hands, 
alone excluded. 

“Aw, we could!” 


118 


The Tribunal of Conscience 


“Follow the track!” 

“Could she do it?” 

“ ’Tain’t so far she couldn’t if we start now.” 

F our little boys, nearing nine, Albert Eddie, 
Logan, John, and Wharton, made Machiavel- 
lian through longing, turned to this little girl 
on her stone and made court to her as they 
knew how. 

“Aw, you ask her! You know her!” from 
Logan to Albert Eddie. 

Albert Eddie cleared his throat. He’d car- 
ried the basket. He’d carried the wood. He’d 
carried the water. He was bitter to desperate 
lengths, indeed, and in the rebound no good 
and obedient little boy at all but one gloriously 
afloat on seas of dire and reckless abandon. 

“We’ll take you to the circus, these boys 
and me, and let you see everything, if you want 
us to,” with a diablerie of cunning so appalling 
and so convicting in its readiness he knew he 
must falter if he stopped to consider it. 

119 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


“ ’Tain’t as if we hadn’t been before, every 
one of us,” from Logan, with that yet greater 
cunning of the practiced and the artist, indif- 
ference; “but we wouldn’t mind taking you.” 

“I been twice,” from Wharton mightily. 

“I been once, last year,” from Albert Eddie. 

“I been twice in one year,” from John, “here 
at home and when I went to visit my grand- 
mother.” 

“I been twice to one show,” from Logan, 
eclipsing them all. “One day with one uncle, 
and the next day with another!” 

And Emmy Lou never had been at all ! The 
tickets, most cunning play of all, had been put 
back in her own hand. 

“Old clown he threw his hat up, turned a 
handspring, and come up and caught it on 
his head,” from Wharton. “We’ll show you 
the clown.” 

“ — rode one horse standing and driving five 
and kissed her hand every time she came by — ” 
120 


The Tribunal of Conscience 


Logan, forgetting his cue and his cunning, was 
saying to Albert Eddie and John. 

“ — picks out the letters, that dog does, and 
spells his own name — ” John, forgetting his 
cue and his cunning, was saying to Albert Ed- 
die and Logan. 

Emmy Lou moved on her stone. 

“ — rolls in a big keg, that elephant does, and 
turns it up and sits down on it. We’ll show 
you the elephant too,” Wharton, faithful to his 
cue, was saying to her. 

Emmy Lou stood up. She handed the tick- 
ets to whoever might be to take charge of 
them. She put her hand in Albert Eddie’s. 
“I didn’t want to come to the picnic and not 
go to the circus,” she said. 

They were grateful and solicitous little boys. 
They hurried her unduly, perhaps, in getting 
her out of the grounds, but once upon the 
safer territory of road beside the track they 
were mindful of her. 


121 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


“I’ll take her by one hand,” said Logan to 
Albert Eddie, “and you keep hold of her by 
the other hand, because she knows you.” 

Whatever that hot, dusty, shadeless, that ap- 
palling stretch of country road meant to Em- 
my Lou, she never afterward referred to it. 
But then there were reasons making silence 
more natural on her part. 

Yet she saw the circus! Emmy Lou saw 
the circus! Come what might, she had that! 

What that they arrived at the circus entrance 
dinnerless, dust-laden, and, but for a stop 
along the way at a pump and trough, thirsty! 

What that the man sitting at the mouth of 
the passage between canvas walls, to whom 
the tickets were handed, eyed them, four unat- 
tended little boys taking marked care of one 
little girl in their midst — since he let them by 
and in! 

Sawdust, orange-peel, flaring gas jets, 
camel, lions, big pussy-tiger, Oh, glorious and 
122 


The Tribunal of Conscience 


unmatchable blend of circus aroma! Oh, vast 
circling sweep and reach of seats and faces, 
with four little boys guarding one little girl 
in their midst, wandering along looking for 
places ! 

Oh, blare of brass, Oh, fanfare of trumpets, 
Oh, triumphant entry of all hitherto but dimly 
sensed and hauntingly visioned, color, pageant, 
rhythm, triumph, glory, heretofore lost as they 
came, but now palpable, tangible, and exist- 
ent! 

Oh, pitiful, a bit terrifying, white-faced 
clown ! The butt, the mock, the bear-all ! Em- 
my Lou does not laugh at the clown! Because 
she pities him and is sorry for him, her heart 
goes out to him instead! And she trembles 
for Nella as her horse urged by the snapping, 
menacing whip sweeps by faster and even fas- 
ter — and she cries out when at the crash of 
the kettle-drums, Zephine leaps 

“But I didn’t see the elephant like I did the 
123 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


lions and the camel and the tiger,” she tells 
Logan and Albert Eddie and the others. Nor 
had she. The elephant had gone to take his 
place in the triumphal entry when Emmy Lou 
and her four cicerones, in their progress 
through the animal tent before the program, 
reached his roped-in inclosure. 

And so they made their way back to him 
through the surging crowd as they went out, 
four solicitous little boys conducting Emmy 
Lou. Made their way as near as might be, 
then pushed her through the row of spectators 
in front of them to the rope. 

“He picks little children up and puts them 
in his trunk,” she was saying as one fascinated 
by the very awfulness of that she dwelt on, as 
they squeezed hei*. through. 

Why should that monstrous bulk of elephant 
have trumpeted just then — as Emmy Lou 
emerged at the rope — have flung his trunk 
out in all the lordly condescension of a mighty 
124 


'*r 





Why should that monstrous bulk of elephant have trum- 
peted just then?” 



The Tribunal of Conscience 


one willing to stoop, in the accustomed quest 
of peanuts? 

Aunt Louise, returning from a futile trip 
to the church corner to meet Emmy Lou, had 
just explained that the picnic had not re- 
turned, being delayed, so rumor said, by the 
search for five missing children, when Bob 
walked in bringing a dust-laden Emmy Lou. 

“Came on her at the circus ?” from Aunt 
Cordelia incredulously. 

“In the animal tent roun’ there whar thet 
elephunt is,” Bob diagramed. 

Emmy Lou’s face, bearing marks of recent 
agitation, showed agitation anew. 

“Good work,” from Uncle Charlie, just ar- 
rived himself. “Who was with her?” 

“Some li’l boys, she says. She warn’t with 
nobody when I come on her runnin’ f’om thet 
elephunt toward me without knowin’ it, an’ 
screamin’.” 


125 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


Emmy Lou’s agitation broke into speech 
mingled with tears. “He picks little children 
up and puts them in his trunk. And he tried 
to pick up me!” 

Along in the night Emmy Lou awaking 
found that she wanted a drink. These warm 
June nights the water bottle and tumbler sat 
on the sill of the open window in Aunt Cor- 
delia’s room, which meant that Emmy Lou 
must get out of bed and patter in there to 
them. 

Reaching the window — was Emmy Lou in 
her nightgown and her bare feet really there 
and awake or in her bed in reality and direly 
dreaming? 

Was it so or not so, this looming, swing- 
ing, menacing bulk, palpably after her 
again, approaching adown the silent, dusky 
street ? 

Seven years old and a little, little girl, Emmy 
126 


The Tribunal of Conscience 


Lou fled to Aunt Cordelia’s bedside and 
tugged at her arm to get her awake. 

Aunt Cordelia, taking her into her bed, 
soothed her, her hand massaging up and down 
back, shoulders, little thighs, comfortingly 
enough, even the while she scolds. She takes 
it without question that Emmy Lou has been 
dreaming. 

“It is what comes of being a naughty little 
girl again. We never sleep well when our 
conscience is uneasy.” 

Emmy Lou lay close. Conscience! Aunt 
Cordelia said so! 

Nor did Aunt Cordelia dream, nor Emmy 
Lou suspect, that the monstrous, looming 
shape padding along the silent street beyond 
the open window with its broad sill was the 
circus elephant making his way to the railroad 
yard and his traveling car, the yard where the 
roundhouse bell even now made melancholy 
tolling in the night. 


127 



y 


LIONS IN THE PATH 




V 


LIONS IN THE PATH 

Emmy Lou came home at close of her first 
day in the Second Reader. “I sit with Hat- 
tie/’ she said. 

“Who is she?” asked Aunt Katie. 

“Where does she come from?” added Aunt 
Louise. 

Emmy Lou was perplexed. Who is Hat- 
tie ? In her pink-sprigged dress with her plaits 
tied behind her either ear? Breathing brisk- 
ness and conviction? Why, Hattie is Hattie . 
But how convey this to Aunt Katie? 

And where does she come from ? How does 
Emmy Lou know? Or how is she expected to 
know? The population of school, in common 
with the parallel world of Sunday school, has 
10 131 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


no background other than school itself, but as- 
sembling out of the unknown and segregated 
into Primer Class, First Reader, Second Read- 
er, even as Sunday school is segregated into 
Infant Class, Big Room, and Bible Class, per- 
forms its functions and disperses. Where, 
then, does Hattie come from? 

“She came out of the cloakroom, and she 
asked me to sit with her.” 

Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise laughed. 
They have laughed at Emmy Lou before in 
this sense and so have others. She has said 
“Madam and Eve” happily and unsuspect- 
ingly all these years until Aunt Katie discov- 
ered it and not only laughed but told , and 
Aunt Louise, in whose person and carriage 
Emmy Lou takes pride, was a “blunette” un- 
til she found it out and laughed and told. 

A little boy at school as long ago as last 
year laughed and told a boy named Billy who 
Emmy Lou had believed was her friend : “Ho, 
132 


Lions in the Path 


Teacher told her to wait there for the present, 
and she thinks it’s a present.” And at Sunday 
school a little girl laughed and told: “She 
thinks her nickel, that nickel in her hand, is 
going up to God.” 

In consequence of these betrayals of a heart 
too faithfully shown and a confidence too 
earnestly given, Emmy Lou is cautious now, 
laughter having become a lion in the path and 
ridicule a bear in the bush. 

A picture hangs above Aunt Cordelia’s man- 
telpiece. It has been there ever since Emmy 
Lou came to make her home with her aunties, 
but she was seven years old when she asked 
about it. 

“Where is the man going?” she said then to 
Aunt Cordelia. “What will the lions do to 
him?” 

“He is going right onward . The lions in his 
path will turn him aside if they can.” 

“Correct,” said Uncle Charlie overhearing. 

133 


Emmy Lou y s Road to Grace 


“But the lions can’t turn the trick. See the 
man’s sword? And his buckler? The sword of 
his courage, and the buckler of the truth.” 

“Who is the man?” Emmy Lou wanted to 
know. 

“The anxious pilgrim of all time,” said Un- 
cle Charlie. 

But Aunt Cordelia, taking Emmy Lou on 
her lap, explained. “The man is any one of 
us — you, me, Uncle Charlie, your little friends 
Maud and Albert Eddie down at the corner, 
everybody. If we meet our lions as we should, 
with courage and the truth, they, nor anything, 
can prevent our going right onward.” 

“Oh, let the pilgrims, let the pilgrims then, 

Be vigilant and quit themselves like men!” 

said Uncle Charlie. 

And now laughter has become a lion in Em- 
my Lou’s path. Will Hattie, her new friend, 
laugh at her? One can refrain from showing 
134 


Lions in the Path 


one’s heart to Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise, 
but in the world of school Emmy Lou needs a 
friend. 

Omniscience at home is strangely wanting 
about this world of school, perhaps because 
Emmy Lou’s aunties in their days went to es- 
tablishments such as Mr. Parson’s Select Acad- 
emy, where the pupil is the thing, and school 
and teachers even a bit unduly glad to have 
and hold her, whereas Emmy Lou at her school 
has not found herself in the least the thing. 

In saying she was to sit with Hattie she 
was implying that she was grateful indeed for 
the overture, whereas Aunt Katie and Aunt 
Louise, taking it the other way, ask who Hat- 
tie is and where she comes from. 

Aunt Katie said more: “We must find out 
something about her. Suppose you try?” 

But Emmy Lou in one short day has di- 
vined all she needs to know, though she does 
not know how to tell this to Aunt Katie. Hat- 
135 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


tie is Hattie, life a foe to be overcome, this 
world the lists, and Hattie the challenged, her 
colors lowered or surrendered never, though 
the lance of her spirit be shivered seventy times 
seven and her helmet of conviction splintered. 

And Emmy Lou? — who, as complement to 
this divination, loves Hattie? — Emmy Lou, 
what with over-anxious debate, what with cau- 
tion, what with weight of evidence and its con- 
sidering, is the anxious pilgrim of all time, 
lions in the path and bears in the bush. 

Hurrying off to school the next morning to 
resume the grateful business of sharing a desk 
with this new friend, Emmy Lou found Hat- 
tie waiting for her at the gate even as she had 
said she would be, and life today, even as life 
yesterday from the initial moment of acquaint- 
ance with Hattie, became crowded at once, 
even jostled and elbowed with happening and 
information. 

As the two took their places in the line form- 
136 


Lions in the Path 


ing at the sound of the school-bell, a little girl 
pushed in ahead of them where there was no 
place until she by crowding made one. But 
she did not care for that and showed it, her 
curls, which shone like Aunt Cordelia’s copper 
hot- water jug, tossing themselves, and her 
skirts flaunting. 

Hattie explained this. “She asked me to 
sit with her, that’s why she’s crowding us now. 
Her name is Sally Carter. But I choose, I 
don’t take my friends.” Her voice lowered 
and one gathered that following was an accusa- 
tion, even an indictment. “She’s the richest 
little girl in the class and wants you to know it. 
And she is an Episcopalian, too.” 

Emmy Lou felt anxious. Would Hattie 
laugh? “I don’t know what an Episcopalian 
is.” 

But she seemed to regard the admission as 
commendable. “Sally’s church gave an enter- 
tainment and called it for the orphans’ fund, 
137 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


and she did the Highland Fling on the stage.” 

Emmy Lou had no idea what the Highland 
Fling was, either, but the line had reached the 
entrance doorway beyond which speech is 
forbidden. Except for this, must she have 
said she did not know? Or might she refrain 
from committing herself? 

For there are different ways of meeting your 
lions. Emmy Lou knew two ways. Last year 
at school a little girl stood up in the aisle for 
no reason but a disposition to do so. Promptly 
and sharp came the rap of a pencil on the 
teacher’s desk. 

Lion in the path of the little girl! Lion of 
reprimand! But the little girl threw dust in 
the lion’s eyes. “Oh, didn’t the bell ring for 
everyone to stand?” she inquired. And sat 
down. 

There is another way. Emmy Lou walked 
in on her friends the Dawkins one day, over 
the grocery at the corner, to find Albert Eddie 
138 


Lions in the Path 


in trouble. Possibly more than any person of 
Emmy Lou’s acquaintance, he seemed an anx- 
ious pilgrim of all time too. 

“Stand right where you are,” Sarah his big 
sister was saying to him. “You’ve had some- 
thing in your mouth again that you shouldn’t. 
Don’t tell me. Can’t I smell it now I try?” 

Albert Eddie was sniffling, which with a 
little hoy is the first step on the road to cry- 
ing. But he met his lion. 

“It’s cigars off the catalpa tree,” he wept, 
and went on into the next room and to bed 
even as Sarah had forewarned him. 

And so, as soon as Emmy Lou is free to 
speak, she must tell Hattie that she does not 
know what the Highland Fling is? Alas, 
that in the exigencies of sharing a desk with 
this person and incidentally fulfilling the func- 
tions of the Second Reader she forgot to 
do so! 

At the school gate at the close of the day 
139 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


Hattie said, “Come go to the corner with me, 
and I’ll show you where I live.” 

Go with Hattie? Her friend and more, her 
monitor and protector? Who the day through 
had steered her by the Charybdis of otherwise 
certain mistake, and past the Scylla of other- 
wise inevitable blunder? Go with her at her 
asking? Did rescued squire follow his protect- 
ing knight in fealty of gratitude? Did faith- 
ful Sancho fall in at heel at his Quixote's 
bidding? Emmy Lou, who always went 
hurrying home because she was bidden so to 
do, faced around today and went the other 
way. 

Hattie lived in a brick house in a yard. Paus- 
ing at her gate she made a proposition. “If 
you could go to my Sunday school I can come 
by and get you.” 

“I go to Sunday school,” said Emmy Lou. 

Hattie was regretful but acquiescent. “Of 
course, if you go. I didn’t know. I’ll walk 
140 


Lions in the Path 


back with you and see where you live. I’m 
Presbyterian. What are you?” 

Having no idea what Presbyterian was, how 
could Emmy Lou say in kind what she was? 

A little girl just arrived at a neighboring 
gate, an habitue of the Second Reader also, 
though Emmy Lou did not know her, joined 
Hattie and Emmy Lou as they passed. Hat- 
tie knew her and, such is the open sesame of 
one achieved friend, Emmy Lou found that 
she was to be considered as knowing her also. 
Her name was Sadie. 

“I’ve just told her I’m Presbyterian,” Hat- 
tie explained. 

“I’m Methodist,” said Sadie. “That’s my 
church across the street.” 

Methodist is Sadie’s church, and Presbyte- 
rian then is Hattie’s? The names in both cases 
being abbreviated without doubt, and in seem- 
lier phrase, St. Methodist and St. Presbyte- 
rian? Emmy Lou is on ground entirely famil- 
141 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


iar to her now, and she shifts her school-bag and 
her lunch-basket relievedly, for while the pil- 
grim must not fail to say she does not know 
when she does not, yet surely she may take 
advantage of a knowledge gained through find- 
ing out? 

“I go to St. Simeon’s P. E. Church,” she 
stated. “It’s ’round on Plum Street.” 

“What sort of church is that?” said Hattie. 

“It’s a stone church with a vine,” said Em- 
my Lou, nor even under questioning could she 
give further information. 

Reversing the idea of Aunt Katie and Aunt 
Louise, Hattie would seem to be gradually 
finding out who and what Emmy Lou is? 
Friendship evidently must rest upon declared 
foundations. Emmy Lou goes to Sunday 
school and her church is on Plum Street. So 
far so good. But one and yet another lion 
faced, another and another spring up. 

“Have you taken the pledge?” asks Hattie. 

142 


Lions in the Path 


Emmy Lou in her time has taken the measles 
and also the chicken-pox, and more latterly 
the whooping-cough. And also given it. But 
the pledge? Has she taken it, and failed to 
recall it? And is it desirable or undesirable 
that she should have taken it? 

“I’ve taken it,” says Sadie in a tone that 
leaves no doubt that one should have taken it. 

While the pilgrim must scorn to throw dust 
in the eyes through evasion, may she not hope 
for advantage through finding out again? Or 
must she definitely draw her sword and face 
this lion by saying that she does not know? 

Bob, the house-boy, sent to hunt her, is the 
instrument of her respite. He brought up 
before the advancing group. Time was when 
he would have said, “Reckon you is done for- 
got whut happened to thet liT girl whut didn’t 
come straight home like she was tol’.” But 
Emmy Lou is a big girl and Bob acknowledges 
it. “Reckon you is done forgot whut happens 
148 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


about dessert for them that don’t come on 
time to get it.” 

The implication dismaying even Hattie and 
Sadie, they took leave of Emmy Lou 
hastily. 

“You can tell us about your pledge another 
time,” Hattie called. “Maybe we will come 
around to see you this afternoon to get better 
acquainted.” 

Despite Bob’s implication, Aunt Cordelia 
had saved some dessert for Emmy Lou. By 
diligent application to her dinner she even 
caught up with the others and thus achieved 
time for an inquiry. Was it on her mind that 
Hattie and Sadie might come around this 
afternoon? 

“What’s the pledge?” 

“Which variety?” from Uncle Charlie. “It 
might be a toast.” 

“Or a pawn,” said Aunt Louise. 

“Or a surety,” said Aunt Katie. 

144 


Lions in the Path 


“And also an earnest,” from Uncle Charlie. 
“Take your choice.” 

“Now stop mystifying her,” said Aunt Cor- 
delia. “There is altogether too much of it. 
I won’t allow it. A pledge, Emmy Lou, such 
as you probably are thinking about, is a prom- 
ise. I daresay some of the little boys you know 
have taken one. I hear it’s quite the thing. 
Now, hurry. That’s why I sent Bob after 
you. Dancing school has been changed from 
Saturday to Friday afternoon, and you have 
only half an hour to dress and get there. Aunt 
Katie is going with you.” 

“But,” dismayed, “two little girls said may- 
be they would come to see me.” 

“Well, I’m sorry. I will see them for you 
if they come. Now, hurry.” 

And Emmy Lou accordingly hurried. For 
while the claims of school are all very well in 
Aunt Cordelia’s regard, the claims of church, 
as Emmy Lou understands these claims, are 
145 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


imperative. And, moreover, while school cen- 
ters itself and its activities within five days and 
its own four walls, St. Simeon’s is the center 
of a clustering and revolving seven-day sys- 
tem. 

On Monday Aunt Cordelia herself takes 
Emmy Lou to old Mrs. Angell’s sewing class 
for the little girls of the Sunday school at the 
rectory next door to the church. On Thursday 
Aunt Louise takes her to the singing class for 
the children of the Sunday school at the or- 
ganist’s, across the street from the church. 
And her aunties share among them the duty of 
getting her twice a week to dancing school, 
taught by Miss Eustasia, the niece of Dr. An- 
gell, at her home next door on the other side 
of St. Simeon’s. The Church assembles its 
youthful populace here in force as Emmy Lou 
grasps it, old Mr. Pelot, who taught Miss Eus- 
tasia herself in her day and the mammas and 
papas of St. Simeon’s in their day too, wield- 
146 


Lions in the Path 


in g a bow and violin and being her assistant. 

Dancing school! Emmy Lou, hurrying, is 
getting ready. School among schools, secular, 
sewing, singing, or Sunday, of endeavor, ef- 
fort, and anxious perturbation! Aunt Cor- 
delia does her best to help Emmy Lou along. 
She takes her in the parlor from time to time, 
after dinner, after supper, and, sitting down 
to the piano, strikes the chords. Aunt Cor- 
delia’s playing has a tinkling, running touch, 
and her tunes have an old-fashioned sound. 

“One, two, three, start now — ” Aunt Cor- 
delia says. “Why didn’t you start when I 
said? Katie, go away from the door, you and 
Louise both. You have laughed at her danc- 
ing, and she won’t do a thing while you are 
here.” 

Then again to the endeavor. One, two, 
three, one, two three, alike the chant and hope 
and stay of dancing. Emmy Lou starts right ; 
she is sure that her right foot leads out on time ; 
n 147 


Emmy Lous Load to Grace 


but the difficulty is, the while she pantingly 
counts, to bring up the left foot on the mo- 
ment. 

Uncle Charlie stops in the parlor doorway 
while he lights a cigar before returning down- 
town. “We might think the left foot was 
faithful to the Church and only the right given 
over to the World, but that Eustasia plys her 
art in the shadow of St. Simeon’s.” 

One foot to the Church and the other to the 
World? What does Uncle Charlie mean? Are 
aspersions to be cast on dancing by other than 
its victims? Or can it be that Uncle Charlie, 
too, like Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise, is laugh- 
ing at her? 

But today Emmy Lou and Aunt Katie go 
hurrying off to dancing school, Emmy Lou 
in her Sunday dress devoted to St. Sime- 
on’s functions, carrying her slippers in their 
bag. 

Miss Eustasia’s house is old and shabby. 

148 


Lions in the Path 


She lives here with her mother who is Dr. 
Angell’s sister, a lady who crosses her hands 
resignedly and says to the mammas and visi- 
tors at dancing school, “Eustasia was not 
brought up to this; Eustasia was raised with 
a right to the best.” 

Aunt Katie and Emmy Lou hurry in the 
front door. Miss Eustasia in the long parlor 
on one side of the hall is hurrying here and 
hurrying there, a little frown of bother and of 
earnestness between her brows, marshalling 
some classes into line, whirling others about 
face to face in couples. And old Mr. Pelot, 
tall and thin, with a grand manner and an 
arched nose, is rapping with his bow on the 
mantel and calling for order. Mammas and 
visitors are in place along the wall, and Dr. 
Angell, who sometimes, as now, comes over 
from the rectory to look on, beams and takes 
off his glasses and rubs them, and, putting 
them on, beams again. 

149 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


All of which is as it should be, as Emmy Lou 
understands it; and Miss Eustasia, born and 
baptized, brought up and confirmed, as it were, 
in the church next door, had to have something 
to do. And St. Simeon’s, gathering its chil- 
dren together, offered her this, and at the 
same time provided for Mr. Pelot, who, being 
on everybody’s mind in his old age, also had 
to have something to do. 

And St. Simeon’s did itself proud. As Aunt 
Katie and Emmy Lou came in, its Infant 
Class, as Emmy Lou from long association 
knew it, was out on the floor taking its first 
position, while St. Simeon’s Big Room, re- 
solved into skirts, sashes, and curls, or neat 
shoes, smooth stockings, knickerbockers, jack- 
ets, broad collars, and ties, was waiting its 
turn to flutter lightly to places, or, bowing 
stiffly, go into duty stoutly. After which its 
Bible Class, now standing about in confiden- 
tial pairs, would go through their new figure 
150 


Lions in the Path 


in the cotillion sedately. Or so it was that 
Emmy Lou coming in in her Sunday dress and 
her slippers understood it. 

“Just in time,” said Miss Eustasia to her 
briefly. “Get into line.” 

The Infant Class withdrawing to get its 
breath, Emmy Lou finds herself between Lo- 
gan and Wharton in a newly forming line 
stretching across the room. She is glad, be- 
cause they are her friends, having gone with 
her on occasion to the circus, and she can ask 
them about the pledge. 

To each nature of school its vernacular: 
rudiments and digits, head and foot, medals 
and deportment, to the secular; bias and hem, 
whipping and backstitch, to the sewing; cho- 
rus and refrain, louder please, now softer, to 
the singing; sponsors, catechism, texts, to the 
Sunday ; and Miss Eustasia now is speaking to 
the class in the vernacular of the dancing 
school. 


151 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


“No, no, no,” in discouragement of all at- 
tempts at conversation. “Eyes in front, every- 
body, on me, and take the first position. Now, 
right hand on right hip, so. Left hand lifted 
above left shoulder, so. Right foot out, heel 
first ” 

“What do you call it?” from Logan, des- 
perate with his efforts. “Have we had it be- 
fore? What’s its name?” 

“Its name,” said Miss Eustasia severely, “is 
the Highland Fling.” 

Emmy Lou found a moment before dis- 
persal to interview Logan and Wharton. 
“What’s the pledge? Have you taken it?” 

“No, I haven’t,” said Logan, not so much 
curt as embittered, so one gathered, by his 
share in the afternoon. 

Wharton was more explicit. “We don’t 
have pledges at our Sunday school.” 

Emmy Lou knew another little boy, Albert 
Eddie. She went down to the corner the next 
152 


Lions in the Path 


morning to see him. If the truth be told, she 
still preferred the snugness of life over a gro- 
cery to a house in a yard. 

Mrs. Dawkins, on what she called a pinch, 
went down in the grocery and helped. She 
was there this Saturday morning, and Maud 
with her. Sarah in the kitchen upstairs was 
mixing the Saturday baking in a crock, and 
Albert Eddie, being punished, was in a corner 
on a stool. 

Politeness dictating that the person in dur- 
ance be ignored, under these circumstances 
Emmy Lou immediately addressed herself to 
Sarah. 

“What’s the pledge? Do you know any- 
body who’s taken it?” 

Sarah brought Albert Eddie right into it, 
stool, corner, and all. “Albert Eddie can tell 
you for he’s just taken one. He’s been a bad 
boy again, and it wasn’t catalpa cigars this 
time either. And after he’s been warned. I’ve 
153 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


made him promise now. Albert Eddie, turn 
round here and say your pledge.” 

Monday morning found Emmy Lou at the 
school gate betimes. “I’ve got my pledge 
now,” she told Hattie and Sadie eagerly, as 
together they arrived. 

“Of course you have,” from Hattie com- 
mendingly, “I knew you must have taken one. 
Say yours.” 

Emmy Lou said hers : 

“I’ll never use tobaccc, no, 

It is a filthy weed, 

I’ll never put it in my mouth ” 

She stopped. As could be seen in the horrified 
faces of Hattie and Sadie, something was 
wrong. 

“They taught you that at your Sunday 
school?” from Hattie. 

“You, a little girl ?” from Sadie. 


154 


Lions in the Path 


Whereupon the pilgrim, the pilgrim Emmy 
Lou, saw it all, saw that she had but endeav- 
ored to throw dust into eyes, beginning with 
her own. 

“I didn’t get my pledge at Sunday school, 
I got it from a little boy. I asked him and 
he taught it to me. We don’t have pledges 
at my Sunday school.” 

“We went to see you on Friday like we 
said, and you were out,” said Hattie severely. 

“They changed the day and I had to go,” 
from Emmy Lou. “I was at dancing 
school.” 

“Dancing school? Your Sunday school 
doesn’t have pledges and you go to dancing 
school? Your church lets you go? Like Sally 
Carter’s? And you didn’t tell us?” 

“My church might give up pledges if it had 
to,” said Sadie, “but its foot is down on danc- 
ing.” 

Yet Hattie would be fair. “Your minister 
155 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


knows? What sort of dancing? What did you 
dance on Friday?” 

“Our minister was there. It is the Sunday 
school that dances. We danced the Highland 
Fling.” 

The school bell rang. 

“Well,” said Hattie as she turned to go, 
“I’m Presbyterian.” 

Sadie bore witness as she turned to follow. 
“And I’m Methodist.” 

Emmy Lou lifted her buckler and drew her 
sword. Never dust in the eyes again. For 
she knew now what she was over and above 
being a St. Simeonite, having asked Aunt Cor- 
delia. In this company it bore not only the 
odium of disapproval and the hall-mark of 
condemnation, but from the qualifying term 
applied to it by Aunt Cordelia would seem to 
merit both. 

“I’m a low church Episcopalian,” said Em- 
my Lou, the pilgrim, stoutly if wretchedly. 

156 


Lions in the Path 


When Emmy Lou reached home that day 
Aunt Katie brought up an old matter. “Aunt 
Cordelia rather likes the looks of the little girl 
named Hattie who came here. So I suppose 
it is all right for you to go on sitting with her. 
What have you found out about her?” 

What Emmy Lou would have liked to find 
out was, would Hattie go on sitting with her? 
But how make these things clear to Aunt 
Katie? 

“Charlie,” said Aunt Cordelia to her brother 
that night, “what on earth do children mean? 
Emmy Lou as she was getting ready for bed 
asked me why Hattie’s church and Sadie’s 
church have the pledge and hers has the High- 
land Fling? It isn’t possible that she has con- 
fused dancing and Sunday school?” 

Uncle Charlie stared at his sister, then his 
shout rang to heaven. 




VI 

THE IMPERFECT OFFICES 
OF PRAYER 










I . ^ i , 








































VI 


THE IMPERFECT OFFICES OF PRAYER 

Recruiting Sunday occurred at Emmy 
Lou’s Sunday school the winter she was eight. 
The change to this nature of thing was sud- 
den. Hitherto when Hattie, her best friend, 
who was Presbyterian, spoke of Rally Day, 
or Sadie, her next best friend, who was Metho- 
dist, spoke of Canvassing Day, Emmy Lou of 
St. Simeon’s refrained from dwelling on Sep- 
tuagesima, or Sexagesima, or Quinquagesima 
Sunday, as the case might be, for fear it ap- 
pear to savor of the elect. As, of course, if 
one has been brought up in St. Simeon’s, and 
by Aunt Cordelia, one has begun to feel it 
does. 

Hattie and Sadie, on the contrary, full of 
161 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


the business and zeal of Rally Day and Can- 
vassing Sunday, looked with pity on Emmy 
Lou and St. Simeon’s, and at thought of Quin- 
quagesima and such kindred Sundays shook 
their heads. Which is as it should be, too. 

For, while there is one common world of 
everyday school in the firmament of the week, 
drawing the Emmy Lous and Hatties and Sa- 
dies into the fold of its common enterprise and 
common fellowship, there are varying worlds 
in the firmament of Sundays, withdrawing the 
Emmy Lous and Hatties and Sadies into the 
differing folds of rival enterprises, Hattie to 
the First Presbyterian Church North, Sadie to 
the Second Avenue M. E. Church South, and 
Emmy Lou with no status or bias as to pole 
at all, if we except polemics, to St. Simeon’s 
P. E. 

And each one within her fold is so convinced 
her fold is the only fold, it is her part to make 
all others feel this. Which is as it should be, 
162 


The Imperfect Offices of Prayer 


too. And, as Hattie pointed out when Sadie 
got worsted in being made to feel it and cried, 
is only the measure of each one’s proper Chris- 
tian zeal! 

And Hattie, being full of data about her 
Rally Day, and Sadie, being full of grace from 
her Canvassing Day, were equipped at seem- 
ingly every point for making another feel it. 
Whereas when Sadie asked Emmy Lou what 
Quinquagesima or fifty days before Easter 
had to do with saving souls, and Hattie asked 
her to spell it, Quinquagesima not only died 
on her lips but she and it seemed indefensibly 
and reprehensibly in the wrong. Which Emmy 
Lou endeavored to remember was but a meas- 
ure of Christian zeal again. 

And now St. Simeon’s, awakening to its 
needs in such zeal, was to have, not a Rally nor 
yet a Canvassing, but a Recruiting Sunday. 
For every Sunday school with any zeal what- 
ever has a nomenclature of its own and looks 
163 


12 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


with pity and contumely on the nomenclature 
of any other Sunday school. So that Emmy 
Lou heard with a shock of incredulity that 
what she knew as the Infant Class was spoken 
of by Hattie as the Primary, and by Sadie as 
the Beginners. 

But this department of Sunday school, what- 
ever its designation, belongs to the early stages 
of faith. Emmy Lou is in the Big Room, now, 
and here has heard about St. Simeon’s Recruit- 
ing Sunday. 

Mr. Glidden, the superintendent, announced 
it. He was a black-haired, slim, brisk young 
man. Emmy Lou knew him well. She liked 
Mr. Glidden. He came to see Aunt Louise, 
and admired her. Week days he was a young 
man who was going to do credit to his father 
and mother. Aunt Cordelia said so. Sundays, 
if he let his Christian zeal carry him too far, 
his betters at St. Simeon’s would have to call 
him down. Uncle Charlie who was a warden 
164 


The Imperfect Offices of Prayer 


at St. Simeon’s said so, curtly, in a way most 
disturbing. 

In announcing Recruiting Sunday, Mr. 
Glidden spoke with feeling. “In the business- 
run world of today,” he told his Sunday school, 
“St. Simeon’s must look at things in a busi- 
ness way. What with Rally Day and Can- 
vassing Day in the other Sunday schools, St. 
Simeon’s stands no chance. Emulation must 
be met with emulation. Let St. Simeon’s get 
out and work. And while it works,” — Mr. 
Glidden colored ; he was young — “let it not for- 
get it shall be its Superintendent’s earnest and 
also daily prayer that it be permitted to bring 
even the least of these into the fold.” 

Furthermore, there should be inducements. 
“For every new scholar brought in,” said Mr. 
Glidden, “there shall be an emblazoned card. 
For every five emblazoned cards there shall be 
a prize. Cards and prizes I shall take pleasure 
in giving out of my own pocket.” 

165 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


In the light of after events, as Emmy Lou 
grasped them, the weakness in the affair lay 
in Mr. Glidden’s failure sufficiently to safe- 
guard his prayer. 

Emmy Lou had considerable data about 
prayer, gathered from her two friends, Hattie 
being given to data, and Sadie being given to 
prayer. As Hattie expounded prayer as ex- 
emplified through Sadie, one fact stands para- 
mount. You should be specifically certain in 
both what you ask and how you ask it. For 
the answer can be an answer and yet be calami- 
tous too. Hattie used the present disturbing 
case with Sadie for her proof. 

Sadie and her brother decided they wanted 
a little sister, and would pray for one. They 
did pray, fervently and trustfully, being 
Methodists, as Hattie pointed out, night after 
night, each beside her or his little white bed. 
And each was answered. It was twin little sis- 
ters. Since when, Sadie was almost as good as 
166 


The Imperfect Offices of Prayer 


lost to her two friends, through having to hold 
one little sister while her mother held the other. 

“ You’ve got to make what you want clear,” 
Hattie argued. “They both prayed for a lit- 
tle sister at the same time. If they’d prayed, 
Sadie one night, and Anselm the next, or if 
they’d said it was the same little sister, they 
wouldn’t ’a’ had a double answer and so been 
oversupplied.” 

Sadie was torn with conflict over it herself. 
Her little sisters weren’t justified to her yet, 
but she wasn’t going to admit they might not 
still be, though the strain on her Christian zeal 
was great. 

For at Sadie’s Sunday school you did not 
get a prize for the new scholars you brought 
in on Canvassing Day. You got a prize when 
the next Canvassing Day came around, if they 
were still there. And Canvassing Day was 
nearly here again, and her scholars were failing 
her. 


167 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


“It’s no easy thing to be a Methodist/’ she 
said in one of her moments of respite from a 
little sister, talking about it with pride through 
her gloom. “You work for all you get ! When 
I could look my scholars up every week, and 
go by for ’em with Tom and the barouche when 
the weather was bad, I had them there for 
roll-call every Sunday. But now that I have 
to hold my little sisters and we haven’t Tom 
or the barouche either because on account of 
my little sisters we can’t afford them, they’ve 
backslid and dropped out.” 

Hattie had data as to that, too. “You 
needn’t be so bitter about it, Sadie. I know 
you mean me! You went around and picked 
your scholars up anywhere you could find ’em, 
and I did too. It wasn’t as if any one of ’em 
had a call to your Sunday school. Or as if 
they had a conviction. Except Mamie Ses- 
sums whose conviction took her away.” 

Sadie spoke even more bitterly. “You 
168 


The Imperfect Offices of Prayer 


needn’t count on Mamie. Because she had had 
a conviction that took her away from where 
she was, I counted on her the most of any of 
mine.” 

Hattie was positive. “But the conviction 
she has now took her away from yours. Her 
mother thinks there is too much about falling 
from grace at your Sunday school ; she doesn’t 
think it nice for little girls to hear so much 
about sin.” 

“She wouldn’t have fallen from grace herself 
if I could have kept after her,” from Sadie. 
“If I hadn’t to hold my little sisters Mamie 
wouldn’t be a backslider now. But my little 
sisters will be justified to me yet. I’m not go- 
ing back on prayer.” 

It all emphasized the need of exceeding cau- 
tion in prayer. Emmy Lou never had thought 
of it so. Time was, in fact, when, praying 
her “Gentle Jesus,” at Aunt Cordelia’s knee, 
she poured it out in Aunt Cordelia’s lap, so to 
169 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


speak, and left it there. Not that Aunt Cor- 
delia had not made her understand that prayer 
goes to God. But that Aunt Cordelia who at- 
tended to everything else for her would see 
about getting it there. 

But that was when Emmy Lou was a baby 
thing, and God the nebulous center of a more 
nebulous setting, with the kindly and cheery 

aspect as well as the ivory beard of Was 

it Dr. Angell, the rector of St. Simeon’s? Or 
was there in the background of Emmy Lou’s 
memory a yet more patriarchal face, reverent 
through benignity, with flowing ivory beard? 
A memory antedating her acquaintance with 
Dr. Angell? She was a big girl now, and God 
was not quite so nebulous nor quite so cheery. 
His ivory beard was longer, and in the midst 
of nebulae for support was a throne. But He 
yet could be depended on to be kindly. Aunt 
Cordelia was authority for that. 

Her concept of prayer, too, had moved for- 
170 


The Imperfect Offices of Prayer 


ward ; prayer in her mind’s eye now taking the 
form of little white cocked-hat billets-doux 
winging out of the postbox of the heart, and, 
like so many white doves, speeding up to the 
blue of Heaven. If God was not too busy, or 
too bothered, as grown people sometimes are 
on trying days, she even could fancy Him 
smiling pleasantly, if absently, as grown-up 
people do, when the cocked-hat billets-doux, a 
sort of morning mail, were brought in to 
Him. 

And so she was glad that Sadie was not 
going back on prayer, but was sure that her 
little sisters would be justified to her. Indeed, 
her heart had gone out to Sadie about it, and 
she had sent up billets-doux of her own, and 
would send more, that the little sisters should 
be justified to her. 

But from this new point of view supplied 
by Hattie, the winging billets-doux, as in the 
mind’s eye they sailed upward, seemed to droop 
171 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


a little, weighted with the need of exceeding 
caution in prayer. And in the light of this 
revelation God in His aspect changed once 
more, again gaining in ivory beard and in 
throne what He again lost in cheer. 

Long ago Aunt Cordelia used to rock her 
to sleep with a hymn. Emmy Lou had thought 
she knew its words, “Behind a frowning provi- 
dence, He hides a smiling face.” Could she 
have reversed it? She had been known to do 
such things before. All this while had it been 
saying: “Behind a smiling providence, He 
hides a frowning face?” 

At Emmy Lou’s own home Aunt M ’randy 
the cook, like Hattie, seemed to feel that 
prayer not sufficiently set around with safe- 
guards and specifications could prove a boom- 
erang. “Didn’t I w’ar myse’f out with prayer 
to get rid er that no-account nigger house-boy 
Bob? To hev’ thet prayer swing eroun’ with 
this worse-account house-boy, Tom?” 

172 


The Imperfect Offices of Prayer 


Tom had gone to Hattie’s house from Sa- 
die’s where they no longer could afford to 
have him, but he had not stayed there. He 
didn’t get along with the cook. From there 
he came to be house-boy for Aunt Cordelia 
where Bob couldn’t get along with the cook. 
Tom’s idea of his importance apparently was 
in the number of places he had lived, and his 
qualifications he summed up in a phrase: “I 
ca’ies my good-will with me to the pussons I 
wuks foh.” 

The morning after Recruiting Sunday had 
been announced at St. Simeon’s Sunday school, 
Uncle Charlie spoke of it at the breakfast table. 
He didn’t seem to think much of it, and re- 
ferred to it by another name, calling it an in- 
novation. 

Aunt Louise, on the contrary, defended it. 
She was teaching in the Sunday school now. 
“If everyone would show the energy and pro- 
gressiveness of Mr. Glidden since he took the 
173 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


Sunday school/’ she said with spirit, “St. Sim- 
eon’s would soon look up.” 

“Glidden!” said Uncle Charlie. “Willie 
Glidden! Pshaw!” 

“Why you speak of him in that tone I don’t 
see, unless it is because you are determined to 
oppose every innovation he proposes.” 

“I oppose his innovations?” heatedly. “On 
the contrary I am in favor of giving him his 
way so he may hang himself in his innovations 
the sooner.” And Uncle Charlie, getting up 
to go downtown, slammed the door. 

Which would have been astounding, Uncle 
Charlie being jocular and not given to slam- 
ming doors, had it not to do with that one of 
the many worlds in the firmament of the Sun- 
days, St. Simeon’s. Emmy Lou was glad she 
understood these things better now. For per- 
sons altogether amiable in the affairs of the 
week-days to grow touchy and heated over the 
affairs of Sundays is only a measure of their 
174 


The Imperfect Offices of Prayer 

Christian zeal. There was comfort and reas- 
surance in the knowledge. Time was when 
it would have frightened her to have Uncle 
Charlie slam the door, and made her choke 
over her waffle, and sent her down from her 
chair and round to Aunt Cordelia for comfort 
and reassurance. 

Aunt Louise, addressing herself to Aunt 
Cordelia in her place behind the coffeepot, still 
further defended Mr. Glidden. 

“He is even waking dear old Dr. Angell 
a bit. Not that we don’t love Dr. Angell as 
he is, of course,” hastily, “but he does lack 
progressiveness.” 

“Which may be why some of us do love him,” 
said Aunt Cordelia tartly. Aunt Cordelia! 
Pleasant soul ! Who rarely was known to sac- 
rifice good temper even to Christian zeal! 
Emmy Lou choked on her waffle despite all! 
“But don’t draw me into it! I decline to take 
sides.” 

175 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


“Which means, of course, that you’ve taken 
one,” said Aunt Louise. “As if I could ever 
expect you to side with me against Brother 
Charlie.” 

“And if I do agree with Charlie, what then? 
To have the running of St. Simeon’s passed 
over his head to Willie Glidden! The church 
our own grandfather gave the ground for! 
And he the senior warden who has run' St. 
Simeon’s his way for thirty faithful years!” 

And Aunt Cordelia, getting up from behind 
the coffeepot and going toward the pantry to 
see about the ordering, broke forth into hymn, 
as was her way when ruffled. Emphatic hymn. 
And always the same hymn, too, Aunt Cor- 
delia, like Uncle Charlie, objecting to inno- 
vations. Emmy Lou was long familiar with 
this hymn as barometer of Aunt Cordelia’s 
state of being: 


“Let the fiery, cloudy pillow 
176 


The Imperfect Offices of Prayer 


sang Aunt Cordelia, flinging open the refrig- 
erator door. 

What it meant, a fiery, cloudy pillow, fur- 
ther than that Aunt Cordelia was outdone, 
was another thing. Emmy Lou always in- 
tended to ask, but the very fact that Aunt 
Cordelia only sang it when outdone prevented 
— that and the additional fact that when Aunt 
Cordelia was outdone Emmy Lou in distress 
of mind was undone. 

Aunt Louise waited until Aunt Cordelia, 
who could be seen through the open doorway, 
straightened up from her inspection of the 
refrigerator. “Still,” she said, “you won’t 
object that I entered Emmy Lou’s name at 
Sunday school yesterday as a recruiter? To 
try her best and get a prize?” 

“I do object if there are tickets about it,” 
emphatically. “You can take care of them 
for her if so. Willie Glidden has gone mad 
over tickets. What with her blue tickets for 
177 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


attendance one place in my bureau drawer, 
and her pink tickets for texts in another place, 
I won’t be bothered further.” 

Yet what were Sunday schools without tick- 
ets ? Emmy Lou getting down from the break- 
fast table, her still unfinished waffle abandoned 
for all time now, was dumbfounded. The one 
thing common to all Sunday schools was tick- 
ets. Though St. Simeon’s under the accelerat- 
ing progressiveness of Mr. Glidden had gone 
further, and whereas in ordinary your accu- 
mulated tickets for every sort of prowess only 
got you on the honor roll, a matter of names 
on a blackboard, Mr. Glidden had instituted 
what he called “a drawing card.” At St. Sim- 
eon’s, now, when your blue tickets for at- 
tendance numbered four — or five those months 
when the calendar played you false and ran in 
another Sunday — you carried these back and 
got the Bible in Colors, a picture at a time. 
And, incidentally, a color at a time, too. Em- 
178 


The Imperfect Offices of Prayer 


my Lou had a gratifying start in these, last 
month having achieved a magenta Daniel fac- 
ing magenta lions in a magenta den, and this 
month adding a blue David with a blue sword 
cutting off the head of a not unreasonably 
bluer Goliath. 

Pink tickets grow more slowly. Aunt Cor- 
delia said that she could see to it that Emmy 
Lou got to Sunday school, but she could only 
do her best about the texts. 

And she did do her best, Emmy Lou felt 
that she did. 

“Say the text over on the way as you go,” 
Aunt Cordelia had said to her as she started 
only yesterday. “That way you won’t forget 
it before you get there.” 

And she had said it on the way, and had said 
it in the class, too, when called on by Miss 
Emerine. 

Aunt Cordelia, plump and pleasant soul, had 
ways of her own, and Emmy Lou in ways 
13 179 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


even beyond the plumpness was modeled on 
her. Aunt Cordelia said “were” as though it 
were spelled w-a-r-e, and Emmy Lou said it 
that way too. 

“ ‘And five ware wise, and five ware fool- 
ish,’ ” Emmy Lou told Miss Emerine. 

“Five what?” Miss Emerine asked, which 
was unfortunate, this being what Emmy Lou 
had failed to remember. 

It was Tom, the new house-boy, who really 
started Emmy Lou’s recruiting for St. Sim- 
eon’s. Hearing Aunt Louise ask her what 
she was doing about looking up new scholars, 
he volunteered his help. 

“There’s a li’l girl up the street whar I 
wuked once is thinkin’ about changin’ her Sun- 
day school. I’ll tell her to come aroun’ an’ 
see you.” 

The little girl came around promptly. It 
was Mamie Sessums. Emmy Lou knew her at 
week-day school. Far from being without a 
180 


The Imperfect Offices of Prayer 

conviction, as Hattie had claimed, she now had 
two. 

“My mother says Tom don’t do anything but 
try to have her change my Sunday school. He 
lived with us before he went to live at Sadie’s. 
But she says she’s very glad to have me stop 
Hattie’s and go with you. She didn’t send 
me there to have the minister go by our house 
every day and never come in. Sadie’s minister 
never came to call on her when I went to that 
Sunday school either. Do you have tickets at 
your Sunday school?” 

Tickets were vindicated. Emmy Lou hur- 
ried upstairs and came back with all her tro- 
phies of this nature. Mamie seemed impressed 
by the Bible in Colors. 

“You get them a picture at a time,” Emmy 
Lou explained. “The first one is Adam in 
buff.” 

“Buff?” said Mamie doubtfully. 

“Buff,” repeated Emmy Lou firmly, since 
181 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


it was so, and not to be helped because Mamie 
didn’t seem to like it. “My Uncle Charlie 
says so.” 

But it was only lack of familiarity with buff 
on the part of Mamie. As a prize, it impressed 
her. “I’ll meet you on your church steps on 
Recruiting Sunday,” she said. 

After Mamie left, Emmy Lou went around 
to see Hattie. “Don’t let it make you feel 
had, taking Mamie away from me,” Hattie 
told her. “I never expected anything else. 
When it’s not a call, nor even a conviction, 
they’re like as not to fail you on the very 
doorstep.” 

Sadie, at her window holding a little sister, 
waved to Emmy Lou and Hattie on the side- 
walk. It was hard Sadie couldn’t be with her 
friends any more. Emmy Lou sent up a bil- 
let-doux that the little sisters might be justified 
to Sadie yet. Poor Sadie! 

It was Tom who told Emmy Lou where to 
182 


The Imperfect Offices of Prayer 


go for her next recruit. She had no idea it 
would be so easy. Sadie had worked hard for 
all she got but it didn’t seem hard to Emmy 
Lou. “There’s a li’l girl roun’ on Plum Street 
where I walked once, too. I’ll speak to her, an’ 
then you go roun’ an’ see her.” 

With Aunt Cordelia’s permission, Emmy 
Lou went around. It proved that she knew 
this little girl at school, too. Her name was 
Sallie Carter. She was the richest little girl 
in the class and said so. Pier curls shone like 
Aunt Cordelia’s copper hot-water jug, and 
her skirts stood out and flaunted. 

Sallie had convictions too. She had tried 
Sadie’s Sunday school while her own church 
was being rebuilt, and she was just about 
through trying Hattie’s. 

“My mother thinks it’s strange that Tom 
should be sending you after me too. Though 
he did live with us before he lived with any of 
you. She is surprised at some of the little 
183 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


girls who go to Sadie’s Sunday school. And 
after she took me away they were the first lit- 
tle girls I met on the steps at Hattie’s Sunday 
school. My mother says I’m a Carter on one 
side and a Cannon on the other, and everybody 
knows what that means. We’re high church 
and you are low, but she’s glad to have me go 
with you to St. Simeon’s for a while and try 
it. Do you have tickets?” 

Tickets and more, the Bible in Colors. Em- 
my Lou, explaining it, felt again she couldn’t 
sufficiently uphold tickets to Aunt Cordelia. 

The very next day Tom came to Aunt Cor- 
delia and said if she would let Emmy Lou 
go with him to Mr. Schmit’s when he went to 
get the ice, he knew of some other little girls 
who might be persuaded to go to her Sunday 
school. At Aunt Cordelia’s word, Emmy Lou 
got her hat and joined Tom with his basket. 

The accustomed place to get extra ice before 
Tom came was Mr. Dawkins’ at the corner. 

184 


The Imperfect Offices of Prayer 


But Tom wouldn't hear of going to Mr. Daw- 
kins’. He argued about it until Aunt Cordelia 
gave in. He said he used to live with Mr. 
Schmit and drive his wagon. 

Emmy Lou knew Mr. Schmit herself. Tom, 
after an inquiry at the counter, took her 
through the store to the back yard where he 
left her, a back yard full of boxes and crates 
and empty coops. Mr. Schmit’s little girl Lisa 
was here with a baby brother in her arms, and 
another holding to her skirts, Yetta, her little 
sister, and Katie O’Brien from next door com- 
pleting the group. Emmy Lou knew Lisa 
and Katie at school, too. Lisa’s round cheeks 
were mottled and red, and the plaits hanging 
down her back were yellow. She did not seem 
overly glad to see Emmy Lou though she came 
forward. 

“Well?” she said. 

It made it hard to begin. And even after 
Emmy Lou had explained that she had come 
185 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


to get them to go to Sunday school Lisa was 
unmoved. 

“What do we want to go to Sunday school 
for? If we wanted to go to Sunday school 
we’d be going. We go to our grandfather’s 
in the country now on Sundays. That way we 
get a ride in my papa’s grocery wagon and we 
get to the country too.” 

“But if you would,” urged Emmy Lou, “it 
would get me a prize.” 

“Sure I see,” said Lisa. “I see that. But 
if Katie here and Yetta and me give up our 
ride out to my grandfather’s, what do we get?” 

“Oh!” said Emmy Lou, and hastened to set 
forth St. Simeon’s largesse and system in tick- 
ets. 

“What do we do to get the tickets?” asked 
Lisa. “We’re Lutheran and Katie’s Domini- 
can. I don’t know as we’d be allowed to. We 
wouldn’t mind four Sundays and get a pic- 
ture, would we, Katie?” 

186 


The Imperfect Offices of Prayer 


Katie, whose hair was black and whose eyes 
were blue, agreed. 

“Sure, we’d like a picture. But I don’t 
know as they’d let me at home. They said 
I shouldn’t go to no more Sunday schools. 
The little girl who was sassy to us and said 
they didn’t want us there was at two Sunday 
schools we’ve been to now.” 

“Still,” said Lisa, “we’d like a picture. 
Which one is your Sunday school ?” 

When Emmy Lou rejoined Tom, she was 
overjoyed. “And they’ll meet me on the 
church steps too. All of ’em will meet me on 
the church steps, Mamie and Sally and Lisa 
and Yetta and Katie.” 

And now it was Recruiting Sunday. But 
the shortness of manner with which Aunt Cor- 
delia tied Emmy Lou’s hair-ribbons was not 
on account of this, Recruiting Sunday for her 
having taken its place among the minor evils. 
Late on Saturday evening she had lost Tom, 
187 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


a case again of the house-boy not getting on 
with the cook. 

“After I wore myse’f out with prayer to 
git rid of thet no-account Bob, to have thet 
prayer swing aroun’ with this worse-account 
Tom,” was Aunt M’randy’s explanation of the 
disagreement. 

“They want me over at Sadie’s house to- 
morrow, anyway,” Tom said with feeling as 
he went. “ ’Count of their grandfather walkin’ 
in on ’em f’om Kansas City sudden there’s 
big doin’s hurried up about the twins. They’re 
goin’ to have a barouche roun’ f’om the livery 
stable too, an’ they want me to drive.” 

Then Tom became darkly cryptic. “I tol’ 
you when I come, I ca’ies my goodwill with 
me to the pussons I wuks foh.” 

And now it was Sunday morning and no 
house-boy. “Charlie,” said Aunt Cordelia to 
this person, “I wish you’d walk around to the 
Sunday school door with Emmy Lou. She’s 
188 


The Imperfect Offices of Prayer 


never been so far alone. Louise is not ready, 
and she’s to meet all those children on the 
church step where they’ll be waiting for her, 
and thinks she ought to be early.” 

“Surely,” said Uncle Charlie. “I’m glad 
to. I’ve an idea it’s about time for Willie 
Glidden to be hanging himself in some of his 
innovations.” 

At the corner Uncle Charlie and Emmy Lou 
met Tom coming back towards Sadie’s with 
the barouche from the livery stable. One felt 
Tom saw them, though he looked the other 
way. 

At the second corner they met Sally Carter. 
Her curls shone like Aunt Cordelia’s copper 
hot- water jug, and her skirts stood out and 
flaunted. She stopped when Emmy Lou 
stopped, but with reluctance, since it was 
palpable she was in a hurry. 

“I’ve decided I didn’t treat Sadie right. 
My name’s still on her roll. Those little girls 
189 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


my mother didn’t want me to associate with 
at the other Sunday schools were on your 
church steps, anyway, and she wouldn’t want 
me to stay.” 

At the next corner they met Lisa and Yetta 
and Katie, scoured and braided and in their 
Sunday dresses. They didn’t want to stop 
either, palpably being in even a greater hurry. 

“As long as we’re goin’ to Sunday school 
we think we’ll go back to the one we started 
from,” said Lisa. “That sassy little girl our 
mothers said we shouldn’t put up with was on 
your church steps anyhow, and was sassy to 
us some more.” 

At St. Simeon’s itself they met Mamie. “I 
didn’t want to wait, but I felt I ought to. 
I’m going back to Sadie’s, and I’m late. Tom 
called to us here on the steps as he went by 
in the barouche, and said Sadie’s little twin 
sisters were going to be baptized at her church 
right after Sunday school.” 

190 


The Imperfect Offices of Prayer 


“Which, ” said Uncle Charlie the while his 
Emmy Lou swallowed tears, “hangs Willie 
Glidden neatly in his own innovations.” 

When Sadie and Hattie and Emmy Lou 
met at school the next day, Sadie’s eyes were 
bright and her face shone. Why not? As she 
pointed out, her little sisters were justified to 
her, her erring scholars were returned, her 
grandfather said he’d see to it that they could 
afF ord to have Tom back and the barouche too, 
and it all went to prove the efficacy of prayer. 

It would seem to. That is, of Sadie’s prayer. 
Emmy Lou could see that. She indeed had 
sent up billets-doux in Sadie’s behalf herself. 
But it did not explain everything. 

“Mr. Glidden at my Sunday school prayed 
too, that the least of these be brought into the 
fold.” 

Hattie forgot her own right to grievance in 
the joy of this additional data in support of 
her position. Had she not claimed that an 
191 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


answer to prayer can be an answer and yet 
be calamitous too? 

“Exactly,” said Hattie. “ ‘The least of 
these into the fold.’ But he didn’t say which 
fold!” 

Did not say which fold ? To God who knows 
everything? For Mr. Glidden meant his fold. 
Hattie, then, was right? 

The concepts of Emmy Lou, eight years old, 
a big girl now, moved on again. Behind a 
smiling providence God hides a frowning face. 
And those winging billets-douoc, already 
weighted with caution and now heavy with 
doubt, in the mind’s eye faltered, hung, and 
came fluttering, drifting, so many falling white 
doves, wings broken, down from the blue. 


VII 


PINK TICKETS FOR TEXTS 



* 














/ 












PINK TICKETS FOR TEXTS 


The walls of St. Simeon’s conservatism had 
fallen. St. Simeon’s, with its arches above, its 
pews below, their latched doors, as it were, 
symbolic, the Old Dispensation depicted in 
the window above its entrance doors, and St. 
Paul, the apostle of the personal revelation, 
smitten to his knees by light from Heaven, the 
figure of the window above its chancel. Mod- 
em progressiveness, the battering-ram in the 
hands of Willie Glidden, come up through the 
Sunday school himself but yesterday, had as- 
sailed the defenses of an older generation suc- 
cessfully. 

Or so Uncle Charlie seemed to think as he 
repeated the news brought from Sunday 
14 195 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


school by Aunt Louise and Emmy Lou. “Dr. 
Angell came into the Sunday school room this 
morning and offered a rector’s prize for pink 
tickets earned for texts ? Each child receiving 
a pink ticket for every Sunday throughout the 
year to be thus rewarded? Willie Glidden has 
goaded him to this.” 

Mr. Glidden had goaded the rector of St. 
Simeon’s to other things which Emmy Lou, 
nearing nine years, had heard discussed at 
home. 

“Popular heads to my sermons for the news- 
papers and the bulletin board?” it was reported 
that Dr. Angell had said indignantly. “Who 
but Glidden wants notices in the papers or a 
bulletin board either? For forty years I have 
sedulously refrained from being popular, and 
I’ll not begin it now.” 

But he came to it, popular heads being fur- 
nished by him weekly, in a dazed pother at find- 
ing himself doing it, but still doing it. 

196 


Pink Tickets for Texts 


“Prizes to encourage the Sunday school?” 
so report said his comment was to this last 
proposition. “Pay the children of my church 
for doing their duty?” 

But the report also said that he calmed down 
on grasping that the proposition centered 
about texts. 

When Dr. Angell met the little people of 
his flock in the company of their elders he 
addressed them much after the same fashion. 
“A big girl, now!” or “Quite a little man!” 
he would say. “Old enough to be coming to 
church every Sunday and profiting by service 
and sermon.” 

“Sermon,” said he, on occasion to a little 
boy who said he didn’t like sermons. “The 
sooner you realize and profit by the knowledge 
that life is one unending sermon, sirrah, the 
better for you.” 

Dr. Angell had gathered his own sermons 
into a book, as Aunt Cordelia told proudly to 
197 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


strangers, a stout volume bound in cloth, with 
a golden sun in a nimbus of rays stamped on 
the cover, entitled “Rays from the Sun of 
Righteousness.” 

And now, his attention caught and held by 
the word “text,” since from his viewpoint to 
every sermon its text, and possibly to every 
text its sermon, he was offering a rector’s prize 
for a year’s quiver of pink tickets, these being 
the visible show of as many correctly recited 
texts. 

“Will you have Emmy Lou try?” Aunt 
Louise said to Aunt Cordelia. “We in the 
Sunday school feel we should do all we can 
to support Mr. Glidden.” 

But Aunt Cordelia needed no urging from 
Aunt Louise. She did not feel that respect for 
the institutions introduced at St. Simeon’s by 
Mr. Glidden that Aunt Louise felt, and did not 
hesitate to say so. But anything inaugurated 
by the rector of her church she did respect. 

198 


Pink Tickets for Texts 


“If Dr. Angell is offering the prize, certainly 
Emmy Lou will try. A rector’s, not a Willie 
Glidden prize, is a different thing. It will be 
something for her to esteem and value all her 
life. I am sorry it is for texts.” Evidently 
the word had the same associations for Aunt 
Cordelia that it had for Dr. Angell. “I have 
trouble enough as it is in making her want to 
stay to church.” 

Aunt Louise explained. “The prizes are 
for the weekly texts heading the Sunday school 
lessons. They have no connection with church 
or the sermon.” 

“Well, maybe not,” Aunt Cordelia con- 
ceded, “but if she is going to take a prize from 
Dr. Angell for texts, and I shall see to it that 
she does, it is no more than she ought to be 
willing to do, to listen cheerfully to his ser- 
mons. I have been too lenient in excusing her 
from church.” 

On this same Sunday afternoon Emmy Lou 
199 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 

went around to talk the matter over with Hat- 
tie, and found Sadie there. 

Emmy Lou and Hattie had been estranged, 
their first misunderstanding, Emmy Lou, with 
St. Simeon’s back of her, having taken one 
stand, and Hattie another. 

Emmy Lou spoke of kneeling at her church 
to pray and standing to sing and Hattie cor- 
rected her. “Who ever heard of such a thing? 
You mean stand to pray and sit down to sing.” 

Emmy Lou didn’t mean anything of the 
kind and said so. 

Hattie faced her down. “Don’t I go to 
church? Doesn’t Sadie go?” turning to this 
person as referee. “Don’t we know?” 

Sadie was obliged to qualify her support. 
“We don’t stand to pray, we lean our fore- 
heads on the next pew.” 

Emmy Lou refused to be coerced. “I don’t 
stand to pray, or lean forward either. I kneel 
down.” 


200 


Pink Tickets for Texts 


“Then,” said Hattie, “it must be because 
you are what my father calls a bigoted Episco- 
palian, that you don’t. Everybody else stands 
up or leans forward.” 

Emmy Lou had faced the chancel of her 
church for four years. “St. Paul doesn’t. He’s 
kneeling above our chancel.” 

“Then he must be a bigoted Episcopalian 
too,” said Hattie with feeling, and went home. 

But today Hattie and Sadie, if anything, 
were envious of Emmy Lou’s opportunity. A 
rector’s prize! 

Hattie, to be sure, with the books of the 
Bible in her memory as were David’s pebbles 
in his scrip, once had felled the giant, Contest, 
and won the banner for the girls over the boys 
at her Sunday school. For which act of prow- 
ess her teacher had rewarded her with a little 
gold pin. 

And Sadie had a workbox, a little affair 
complete, scissors, thimble, and all, a recogni- 
201 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


tion of faithfulness at large, from her Sunday 
school teacher, the same delivered to her by 
the superintendent before the assembled Sun- 
day school. And as she pointed out, the call- 
ing of her name and the walk up and down the 
aisle to receive the gift were no small part of 
the reward. 

It did stagger them both that Emmy Lou 
should have to stay to church. “Still,” argued 
Hattie, “it will be worth it, a rector’s prize. 
Though why you don’t say preacher!” 

“Or minister,” said Sadie. 

“My brother once got a silver dollar for a 
prize that wasn’t a dollar at all but a watch 
made to look like a dollar,” said Hattie. 

“But not from church,” Sadie reminded 
her. 

“No, from the President Dollar Watch 
Company for guessing the pictures of the 
presidents. But still it was a prize.” 

Sadie could supplement this. “My mamma 
202 


Pink Tickets for Texts 


heard of a little girl who sold tickets for a 
picnic and won a locket on a chain.” 

Emmy Lou went home cheered. Aunt Cor- 
delia had put the emphasis on the texts where- 
as Hattie and Sadie had put it on the prize. 

“A silver dollar that wasn’t a dollar but a 
watch, and a locket on a chain,” said Uncle 
Charlie, overhearing her tell about it. “Well, 
well!” 

A rector’s prize should indeed be something 
worth the working for. Fifty-two pink tickets 
standing for fifty-two correctly recited texts, 
and attendance at church for fifty-two Sun- 
days! 

For Aunt Cordelia was as good as her word. 
The next Sunday she and Uncle Charlie on 
their road to St. Simeon’s met Emmy Lou 
returning from Sunday school. Hitherto on 
these weekly encounters it was a toss-up wheth- 
er she should be allowed to proceed, or must 
return to church. 


203 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


With Emmy Lou, face and eyes uplifted to 
Aunt Cordelia, mutely interceding for herself, 
while Uncle Charlie articulately interceded for 
her, it was a stand-off whether or not she 
should be required to go. And when the worst 
happened and she must turn about and accom- 
pany Aunt Cordelia, the propinquity of Uncle 
Charlie in the pew beside her had helped her 
through. Until recently he had slipped 
smoothly rounded peppermints banded in red 
from his vest pocket to her, or, the supply run- 
ning low, passed her his pencil and an envelope 
to amuse herself. But she was a big girl now 
and Aunt Cordelia no longer permitted these 
indulgences. 

“Sermons in pencils too, perhaps, Cordelia,” 
Uncle Charlie pleaded, “and good in pepper- 
mints.” 

But in vain. “Charlie!” Aunt Cordelia but 
remonstrated, shocked. 

Nor was Emmy Lou to be excused today. 

204 


Pink Tickets for Texts 


Aunt Cordelia, plump and comely in her furs 
and ample cloak and seemly bonnet, and Uncle 
Charlie in his top-coat, gray trousers, silk hat, 
and natty cane, brought up short on meeting 
her. Not that she, in a chinchilla coat suit- 
able for the big girl she was, and a gray plush 
hat, with her hair tied with scarlet ribbons, had 
much hope herself. 

“I see you have your pink ticket in your 
hand, a good beginning,” said Aunt Cordelia. 
“I’m glad you walked to meet us. You can 
do so every Sunday; the change and relaxation 
will do you good. Now, Charlie, not a word. 
From now on, while she is trying for Dr. An- 
gell’s prize, she will go back with us to 
church.” 

Emmy Lou found herself there within a 
very few minutes, the parallelograms of pews 
about her filled with the assembled congrega- 
tion, she in her place between Aunt Cordelia 
and Uncle Charlie. 


205 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


And at home, where she now would be had 
Aunt Cordelia relented, what? Her children 
doomed to sit in a wooden row against the 
baseboard until she arrived to release them. 
The new book, for Emmy Lou is reading now, 
left where one begins to divine that the white 
cat in reality is a beautiful lady. Also at 
home on Aunt Cordelia’s table that Sunday 
institution never forgotten by Uncle Charlie, 
the box of candy, from whose serried layers 
Emmy Lou may take one piece in Aunt Cor- 
delia’s absence. Furthermore at home the 
realm of the kitchen with its rites of Sunday 
preparation, Aunt M’randy its priestess, and 
delectable odors and savory steam arising from 
its altar, the cooking-stove. 

And in the stead for Emmy Lou a morning 
spent in church. Still she can settle down and 
think of the prize which as reward for all this 
faithfulness will be hers. Think of Hattie’s 
gold pin, and Sadie’s work-basket, of the sil- 
206 


Pink Tickets for Texts 


ver dollar which in reality was a watch, and 
the locket on the chain. 

Aunt Cordelia touches Emmy Lou, and, 
brought to herself, she stands up. Aunt 
Cordelia finds the place and hands her a 
prayer book. Church has begun. 

Amid form without meaning, and symbol 
without clue, the mind of Emmy Lou wan- 
ders again, this time to that puzzle, the adult, 
no less impenetrable to the mind of nine than 
the shrouded mystery of ancient Egypt to the 
adult. For adults, Aunt Cordelia for one, here 
beside her in the pew, love to go to church. 
The proof? That they of their own volition, 
since the adult acts of himself, are here. 

Aunt Cordelia touches Emmy Lou. She 
and Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie and the 
congregation of St. Simeon’s, Hattie to the 
contrary, kneel down. 

But the mind continues to wander. The 
adult is here because it wants to be here, 
207 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


whereas Emmy Lou is here because Aunt Cor- 
delia says she must be. Her eyes, too, will 
travel ahead on the prayer book page to the 
amen. What amen? Any and all, since amens 
wherever occurring signify the end of the 
especial thing of the moment, whether said, 
sung or prayed. The thought sustaining one 
being that, amen succeeding amen, the final 
and valedictory one is bound to come in 
time. 

“Get up for the Venite,” whispers Aunt Cor- 
delia, and Emmy Lou who has lost herself 
on her knees gets up, pink with the defection. 
Not that the Venite has any significance to her 
which brings her to her feet, but that to find 
herself in the wrong situation at church, or 
anywhere, is embarrassing. 

This pitfall of ritual is called the service, 
though it might be worse since the more service 
the less sermon. As nearly as Emmy Lou can 
grasp it, at Hattie’s church, beyond a sparse 
208 


Pink Tickets for Texts 


standing up to pray, and sitting down to sing, 
it is all sermon. 

Aunt Cordelia has to speak to her by and 
by again: “Get up for the Jubilate/’ Emmy 
Lou having lost herself during the second les- 
son. 

And yet ? And yet ? Can it be there is more 
in this business of church than an Emmy Lou 
suspects? The congregation now going down 
on its knees for that matter called the Litany, 
a tear presently splashes on the glove of Aunt 
Cordelia kneeling beside Emmy Lou, her head 
bowed above the big, cross-emblazoned prayer 
book that she always uses. 

Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise wear white 
gloves or gray or brown as the case may be, 
and feathers and flowers, and their dresses are 
varied and cheery. But Aunt Cordelia still 
wears black in memory of Emmy Lou’s mother 
who went away when Emmy Lou was four. 
The tear falling on her black glove and sliding 
209 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


off to the book makes a stain tinged with pur- 
ple from the kid. 

Then Emmy Lou remembers this is the 
anniversary of the day her mother went for- 
ever, and understands why the prayer book in 
Aunt Cordelia’s hand is open at the flyleaf 
bearing the name of its first owner, Emily 
Pope McLaurin. 

Are we nearer our dead at church? And 
being nearer, are we comforted? For when 
Aunt Cordelia arises from her knees her face 
is happy. 

“The four hundred and ninety-fourth 
hymn,” she whispers. “Find the place.” 
Then in refutation of Hattie, “Stand up.” 

And Emmy Lou, finding the hymn for her- 
self, stands up and with Aunt Cordelia and 
Uncle Charlie and the congregation, sings 
heartily : 

“The Church’s one foundation 

Is Jesus Christ her Lord ” 

210 


Pink Tickets for Texts 


While the service thus drags its length along, 
the hymn which Emmy Lou both can find for 
herself and can sing heartily being the only 
oasis in the desert of her morning, there is 
worse ahead. Between two uprising peaks of 
the amens, one of which is reached with the 
close of the hymn, lies that valley of dry bones 
called the sermon. 

Dr. Angell is beginning it now. “ ‘Thy word 
is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my 
path.’ ” 

This seems a reasonably clear and definite 
statement even to Emmy Lou, not quite nine 
and slow to follow. But no. 

“The Psalmist was given to imagery, which 
is to say, was an Oriental,” begins Dr. An- 
gell. And so one goes down with him into the 
valley of dry bones. 

The mind wanders anew. How can it help 
wandering? Albert Eddie Dawkins is across 
the church in a side pew with his big sister, 
15 211 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


Sarah. She has decided that he shall try for 
a rector’s prize too. He is low in his mind 
about it, and said so to Emmy Lou coming out 
of Sunday school this morning. 

Joe Kiffin made a proposition to him that 
he could not accept, Joe being the big boy who 
drove the wagon and delivered for the Daw- 
kins grocery. 

“He said he would take me and another boy 
this morning to a place where we can get all 
the honey locusts we want. A place where the 
ground is covered with ’em. But we both had 
to come to Sunday school and stay to church, 
and Joe says we can’t expect him to take us 
in the afternoon when it’s the only afternoon 
he’s got. You know honey locusts?” 

Emmy Lou was compelled to admit that she 
did not. 

“Well,” a little anxiously, “I don’t either. 
But if I and the other boy could have gone with 
Joe, I’d have found out.” 

212 





“With one pink ticket 


in hand; fifty-one yet to be achieved 


for texts.” 






Pink Tickets for Texts 


The other boy was at church too. By turn- 
ing her head the least bit Emmy Lou could see 
him. His name was Logan. But he wasn’t 
trying for a prize. He said they might make 
him stay to church — “they” meaning the grown 
persons in the pew with him — but they couldn’t 
make him try for pink tickets, or walk up an 
aisle to get a prize he mightn’t want anyway. 

Mightn’t Logan want it? Was there any 
chance that Emmy Lou would not want hers? 
Fifty-two — no, fifty-one — Sundays now to 
come, and with one pink ticket in hand, fifty- 
one yet to be achieved for texts. 

Dr. Angell is ending his sermon. . . and 
so it comes that the words of the Psalmist oc- 
curring in the liturgy of our service, are a lamp 
unto our feet, and a light unto our path.” 
And he and his congregation come up out of 
the valley of dry bones. 

And yet? And yet? Emmy Lou’s eyes, 
fixed on Dr. Angell, are registering on the 
213 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


retina of her mind for all time a figure which 
for her shall be a type, dominant in its atti- 
tude of beneficent authority, hands outspread 
above its people, rumpled hair white, beard 
white, robes white, a shaft of light from a 
common window into heaven shared with him 
by St. Paul, the bigoted Episcopalian, search- 
ing him out where he stands. 

As void of meaning to her, these gettings up 
and these sittings down, these venites, jubi- 
lates, and amens, as the purpose of Dr. Angell 
in his chancel. Yet who shall say at what mo- 
ment Emmy Lou in her pew, struggling along 
in the darkness though she is, shall sense the 
symbol of the one, and behold in the other the 
office and the appointment? 

And the adult who is here of self -actuated 
volition? The Aunt Cordelia ever in her place 
in the family pew? Emmy Lou’s eyes turn 
to this person, and behold, her face is touched 
as by a light, too, and her eyes are shining. 

214 


Pink Tickets for Texts 


“Get up,” she whispers as she herself arises, 
“it is the benediction.” 

Uncle Charlie is jocular on the way home. 
“And what did you think of the sermon?” he 
asks Emmy Lou. 

She does not know that he is jocular, nor 
that she too, unwittingly, is the same in her 
reply. “I thought I understood the text until 
Dr. Angell began to explain it, and then I 
lost it.” 

Fifty-one more Sundays, fifty-one more 
sermons, fifty-one more texts between Emmy 
Lou and her reward! The next Sunday and 
there would be fifty, and the next forty-nine! 

As the weeks went by Emmy Lou discussed 
the prize with Aunt Cordelia, and incidentally 
with Uncle Charlie who overheard the conver- 
sations. 

“When Albert Eddie’s mamma won a prize 
for catechism in England where she lived when 
she was little, it was tea to take home to her 
215 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


mother, and a flannel petticoat for her grand- 
ma, and she cried.” 

And again. “Sadie says it’s an awful thing 
when your name is called, to get up and walk 
up the aisle, but Hattie says that you don’t 
mind it so much if you keep thinking about the 
prize.” 

Papa came down once a month from his 
home city a hundred miles away, to stay over 
Sunday and see Emmy Lou. “I was going to 
propose,” he said on one of these visits, “that 
the next time, you and Aunt Cordelia and 
Uncle Charlie get on the train and come up to 
visit me. But it’s no use, I see.” 

“Not until I get my prize,” said Emmy Lou. 
“I have forty-one pink tickets in Aunt Cor- 
delia’s bureau drawer, and today will make 
forty-two.” 

“I am almost sorry I let her try,” Aunt 
Cordelia told her brother-in-law and Uncle 
216 


Pink Tickets for Texts 


Charlie. “She begins to study the text for the 
next Sunday as soon as she gets home on 
this.” 

Aunt Louise, as the allotted Sunday drew 
near, brought home news of a tiff between Dr. 
Angell and Mr. Glidden. 

“Mr. Glidden told Dr. Angell today that 
he had been looking over a printed list of Sun- 
day school prizes sent to superintendents, and 
had noticed some excellent suggestions. Dr. 
Angell was ruffled and said, ‘If I’m fool 
enough to come to prizes, bribes for duty, I’m 
nevertheless still capable of providing them.’ 
I’m afraid he is getting old.” 

“Old,” retorted Uncle Charlie. “It’s being 
goaded by Willie Glidden. Drive even a saint 
too far and he will show his manhood.” 

“Hattie’s is a little pin,” remarked Emmy 
Lou, even irrelevantly, “and Sadie’s is a work- 
box, and that other little girl’s was a locket on 
a chain.” 


217 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


The morning of the fifty-third Sunday came. 
“I don’t know which she is the more, proud, or 
alarmed, at thought of walking up the aisle 
this morning for her prize,” said Aunt Cor- 
delia after Emmy Lou left the breakfast table. 
“There are only three children who have come 
through successfully in the whole Sunday 
school, Charlie. A little girl named Puggy 
Western, according to Emmy Lou, she her- 
self, and Albert Eddie Dawkins. Two of the 
three are thanks to Sarah and myself, if I do 
say it.” 

The moment was come. The Sunday school 
— Bible Class, Big Room, and Infant Class — 
was assembled. Mr. Glidden, with Dr. Angell 
beside him, had arisen. 

“One at a time, Puggy Western, Emily 
Louise McLaurin, and Albert Edward 
Dawkins come forward and receive their 
prizes.” 


218 


Pink Tickets for Texts 


Puggy Western went up first, in a brand- 
new hat and coat for the occasion, and came 
hack. 

Emily Louise McLaurin went up next in a 
next-to-new coat and hat and dress, and 
came hack. 

Albert Edward Dawkins, in a new suit and 
his first high collar, went up and came back. 
A hymn, and Sunday school was over, and all 
ages and sizes crowded around the three to 
see their similar rewards. 

When Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie on 
their road to church met Emmy Lou this morn- 
ing, her eyes, like her late accumulation of 
tickets, were pink. She to whom tears came 
hard and seldom had been crying. 

“And how about the prize?” asked Uncle 
Charlie. 

Emmy Lou, tears stoutly held back, handed 
it to him. He looked it over, opened it, read 
219 


Emmy Lou 3 s Road to Grace 


her name in inscription within, then lifted his 
gaze to her. 

“Well, I’ll be doggoned!” 

“Charlie!” from Aunt Cordelia. 

“I surely will. The same to the other two?” 

Emmy Lou nodded. There are times when 
one cannot trust oneself to speak. 

And when Uncle Charlie handed back the 
volume stoutly bound in cloth, stamped with 
a golden sun in a nimbus of rays, and bearing 
for title, “Rays From the Sun of Righteous- 
ness,” the nimbus surrounded, not a golden 
sun, but a silver dollar held in place by Uncle 
Charlie’s thumb. 

“A dollar that is only a dollar, and not a 
watch,” he explained regretfully. “But some- 
where in the week ahead we may be able to 
overtake a locket on a chain.” Then to Aunt 
Cordelia, “I’ll decide it this morning, Cor- 
delia. Emmy Lou is excused for today from 
anything further in the nature of sermons.” 

220 


Pink Tickets for Texts 


The next Sunday Albert Eddie Dawkins 
was absent from Sunday school. He had run 
off, so his sister Maud explained, and could 
not be found. 

Emmy Lou heard more about it later on 
from Albert Eddie himself. She also found 
out what a honey locust is, though she had had 
to wait a year to do so. 

“I told Joe Kiffen if he’d take us to that 
honey locust place now, that he said he would 
last year, I’d stay away from Sunday school. 
And he did. And here’s one for you.” 

Emmy Lou took the pod and bit into it. 
As solace and recompense she could have 
wished for something more delectable. 



VIII 

STERN DAUGHTER OF THE 
VOICE OF GOD 



VIII 


STERN DAUGHTER OF THE VOICE OF GOD 

Hattie’s rule of life was simple, but severe. 
She set it forth for Emmy Lou. “Right is 
right, and wrong is wrong, and you have to 
draw the line between. And when you’ve 
chosen which side you’re on, you have to stand 
by your colors.” 

She went on to diagram her meaning. “I 
heard my father tell my brothers what it means 
to stand by your colors. He said they couldn’t 
be too careful in their associates. That now 
they’ve joined the League for the Right they 
must show their faith by their works. You and 
I can’t associate with anyone who chooses the 
other side either. If Lisa Schmit will go to 
Sunday picnics, she’s wrong, and you and 
225 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


I have to show our colors and tell her so.” 

Emmy Lou hesitated at such consignment 
of Lisa to the limbo defined as wrong, but Hat- 
tie said she didn’t dare hesitate. She even 
showed a disposition to take Emmy Lou’s 
right of election into her keeping, saying if 
she felt this way about it she’d speak for her. 

“No, we won’t come into your game of 
prisoner’s base,” she told Lisa and Yetta at 
recess; “we’re going to have a game of our 
own.” 

The contumely for the unfriendly act never- 
theless fell on Emmy Lou who knew them 
best. “She’s getting to be stuck up,” Lisa said 
bitterly to her own group, with a jerk of her 
head toward Emmy Lou standing by Hattie. 
“She won’t play with Yetta and me any more 
because our papa keeps a grocery.” 

“No such thing!” said Hattie. “She won’t 
play with you because you go to picnics on 
Sunday.” 


226 


Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 


Was this true? Or was it because Hattie 
had told her she must not play with them be- 
cause they went to picnics on Sunday? 

Hattie called this bringing of Lisa and 
Yetta to judgment “drawing the line.” It 
was a painful process to the rejected. Lisa 
went off with her face suffused and Yetta who 
followed her was crying. 

Next followed the case of Mittie Heinz 
whose mamma kept a little shop for general 
notions, a stock that Emmy Lou never had 
been able to identify, often as she had been 
there to buy needles or thread or cambric for 
Aunt Cordelia. 

Mittie read her storybook on the steps of 
the shop on Sunday and Hattie explained to 
her that this made it impossible to include her 
in a game of catcher. 

“Right’s right, and wrong’s wrong,” she 
said. “If we are going to draw the line we 
have to draw it.” 


16 


227 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


‘‘I read my books on Sunday,” expostulated 
Emmy Lou, for Mittie’s startled face showed 
surprise as she turned away, and her eyes 
looked reproach at Emmy Lou. 

“But they are books you get out of your 
Sunday school library, and don’t count any- 
way because you say you don’t like them,” from 
Hattie. 

This lamentable and unhappy knowledge of 
good and evil was forced on Emmy Lou when 
in the ascending scale of years she simulta- 
neously reached her ninth birthday, the Fourth 
Reader, and the estate of bridesmaid to Aunt 
Katie. 

Life from this eminence appeared broad- 
spread and beautiful, and diversified by variant 
paths within the sweep of a far horizon until 
now never suspected. But Hattie, youthful 
Virgil to her youthful Dante, permitted per- 
sonally conducted excursions only, and these 
along a somewhat monotonous because strait 
228 


Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 


and narrow path — all other roads, whether 
devious or parallel, flower-bedecked or somber, 
ascending or descending, leading but to ques- 
tionable ends. 

The first travelers pointed out by Hattie 
as trudging these alien roads were Lisa, Yetta, 
and Mittie, as has been shown. The second 
group journeying on an upland, flowery way 
paralleling the strait and narrow path in gen- 
eral direction, at least, were Alice, Rosalie, 
and Amanthus. Charming names ! Enchant- 
ing figures! 

School opened early in September. Alice, 
Rosalie, and Amanthus, who were newcomers, 
were gi^en desks across the aisle from Emmy 
Lou. Alice, seeing her earnestly scrubbing 
her desk each morning before school and ar- 
ranging it for the day, laughed in her eyes. 
Amanthus, seeing her test her pen and try her 
ink for the coming ordeal of copybook, laughed 
in her dimple. And Rosalie, asking her what 
229 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


she was hunting on the outspread page of her 
geography, laughed aloud when Emmy Lou 
replied that it was Timbuctoo, and that she 
could find it easier if she knew whether it was 
a country, or a mountain, or a river. On which 
they all came across the aisle and hugged her. 

“You said in class that the plural of foot- 
note was feetnotes,” said Rosalie. 

“You said, when the teacher held you down 
about the spelling in your composition, that a 
dog didn’t have fore-feet but four feet,” said 
Amanthus. 

“It’s so funny and so dear,” said Alice. 

“What?” asked Emmy Lou. 

“You,” said Amanthus, and they all kissed 
her. 

“Come and see us,” said Rosalie; “we’re your 
neighbors now. We’ve moved in the white 
house with the big yard on your square, and 
Alice, our cousin, and her mother have come 
to live with us. We’ve never been to a public 
230 


Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 


school before. You live in a white house at 
the other end of the square. We saw you in 
the yard.” 

“I’ll come this afternoon,” said Emmy Lou, 
“and I’ll bring Hattie. I’ll get her now so 
she’ll know you.” 

But Hattie declined to come. She shook 
her head decidedly. “They’ve light disposi- 
tions and I’ve not. My mamma said so about 
some other little girls I couldn’t get along with. 
I don’t want to come, and besides I’m not sure 
I want to know them.” 

Which would imply that light dispositions 
were undesirable apart from Hattie’s inability 
to get along with them ! Hattie could be most 
disturbing. 

Towards noon a sudden shower fell, and the 
class was told to remain in its room for recess 
and eat its luncheons at its desks. 

Across the aisle on the other side of Emmy 
Lou sat Charlotte Wright. She, too, had 
231 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


shown every disposition to be friendly but Hat- 
tie discouraged this also. She leaned from 
her desk now. “Will you have a piece of my 
homemade hickory-nut candy?” She spoke 
with pride. “My mamma let me make it my- 
self on the grate.” 

On the grate? Why not in the kitchen on 
the stove? Still that was Charlotte’s own af- 
fair. More showy than tidy in her dress, she 
seemed one of those detached and anxious little 
girls hunting for friends. The kindly impulse 
was to respond to overtures, Emmy Lou know- 
ing a past where she had needed friends. And 
besides there was the candy. Hickory-nut 
candy does not have to look tidy to look 
good. She had a liberal lunch outspread on 
the napkin upon her desk, but she had no 
candy. 

But Hattie leaving her desk and approach- 
ing, held her back. “No, she won’t have any 
candy,” she said, and gathering up Emmy 
232 


Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 


Lou’s lunch in the napkin and thus forcing 
her to follow, walked away. 

Whereupon Rosalie and Amanthus, arising 
and going around to Charlotte, flung back their 
curls as they crowded into her desk, one on 
either side of her, and ashed for a piece of her 
candy. 

“I don’t say it wasn’t hard to do,” said Hat- 
tie, flushed and even apologetic. “But I had 
to. She’s not your kind, and she’s not mine.” 

Yet Rosalie and Amanthus were sharing 
Charlotte’s desk and her candy. Was she their 
kind? 

Hattie’s voice had dropped and was even 
awe-struck as she explained. “Charlotte’s 
papa and her mamma don’t live together. I 
heard my mother and my aunt say so. She 
and her mother live in a boarding house next 
to the confectionery.” 

In a boarding house? Charlotte through 
necessity making her candy on a grate, there- 
233 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


fore, and not in the kitchen! And proof in- 
deed that she was not their kind, even to Emmy 
Lou, in a day when the home, however small, 
was the measure of standing and the rule! 

Yet Alice has arisen and is looking across 
at Charlotte. Emmy Lou loves Alice. Light 
disposition or not, she is drawn to her. Her 
hair is a pale gold while the curls of her cous- 
ins are sunny, and her smile is in her reflective 
eyes while theirs is in lip and dimple. Of 
the three she loves Alice. Why? She has 
no idea why. Alice moves forward suddenly 
and going around to Charlotte leans to her 
and kisses her. 

“Is Charlotte their kind?” Emmy Lou asks 
Hattie who also was watching. 

“Ask them; they ought to know,” tersely. 
“We can’t afford to care, even if it does make 
us sorry. My father said people have to stand 
by their colors.” 

Later as school was dismissed and the class 
234 


Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 


was filing out, Rosalie called to Emmy Lou, 
“If you will go by for Charlotte, she says she 
will come this afternoon, too.” 

Emmy Lou went home disturbed. Char- 
lotte’s father and mother did not live together, 
and because of this Charlotte was not their 
kind. 

Marriage then is not a fixed and static fact? 
As day and night, winter and summer? 
Would she yet learn that the other family re- 
lations as brother and sister, parent and child, 
are subject to repudiation and readjustment, 
too? 

Emmy Lou was just through serving as 
bridesmaid for Aunt Katie, in a filmy dress 
with a pink sash around what Uncle Charlie 
said was by common consent and courtesy her 
waist, whatever his meaning by this, and car- 
rying a basket from which she earnestly scat- 
tered flowers up the aisle of St. Simeon’s in 
the path of the bride, and incidentally in the 
235 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


path of Mr. Reade, the bridegroom, and had 
supposed she now knew something about mar- 
riage. 

The sanction of St. Simeon’s was upon the 
bride, crowned with the veil and orange blos- 
soms of her solemn dedication, or so the brides- 
maid had understood it. 

“Behold, whiles she before the altar stands, 
Hearing the holy priest that to her speakes, 
And blesseth her with his two happy hands !” 

Such in substance was the bridesmaid’s un- 
derstanding of it, if not in just these words. 

To be sure the occasion held its disappoint- 
ment. The concentration of gifts upon the 
bride would argue that others shared with 
Emmy Lou a sense of the inadequacy of the 
bridegroom in his inglorious black clothes. 

There was a steel engraving above the man- 
tel in the dining-room called “The Cavalier’s 
Wedding,” at which Emmy Lou glanced again 
286 


Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 


today as she came in, and in which the bride- 
groom has a hat in his hand with a feather 
which sweeps the ground, and wears a worthy 
lace-trimmed coat. 

At the dinner-table she repeated the news 
which had so dismayed and astounded her. 

“There’s a little girl in my class named Char- 
lotte Wright whose papa and mamma don’t 
live together.” 

“Dear, dear!” expostulated Aunt Cordelia, 
“I don’t like you to be hearing such things.” 

This would seem to ratify Hattie’s position. 
“Then I mustn’t play with her?” 

“Why, Emmy Lou, what a thing for you 
to say!” 

“Then I can play with her?” 

“The simple code of yea, yea, and nay, nay,” 
said Uncle Charlie. 

“Charlie, be quiet.” Then to Emmy Lou, 
“You mustn’t pin me down so; I will have to 
know more about it.” 


237 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


“I fancy I know the case and the child,” 
said Uncle Charlie. “The father worked on 
my paper for a while, a fine young fellow with 
a big chance to have made good.” Then to 
Emmy Lou, “Uncle Charlie wants you to be 
as nice to the little girl as you know how, for 
the sake of the father who was that fine young 
fellow.” 

Emmy Lou was glad to get her bearings. 
Hattie would be glad to get them too. The 
status is fixed by a father and they could play 
with Charlotte. One further item troubled. 
“What are light dispositions?” she inquired. 

“Leaven for the over-anxious ones,” said 
Uncle Charlie. “If you meet any, pin to 
them.” 

Emmy Lou turned to Aunt Cordelia. “May 
I get Charlotte, then, and go to see Alice 
Pulteney and Rosalie and Amanthus May- 
nard? They’ve just moved on our square?” 

“Agree, Cordelia, agree,” urged Uncle 
238 


Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 


Charlie as he arose from the table. “If we 
are to infer they have light dispositions, 
drive her to see Alice, Rosalie, and Aman- 
thus.” 

Emmy Lou started forth by and by. The 
shower of the morning was over and the Sep- 
tember afternoon was fresh and clear. It was 
heartening to feel that she was standing by 
her colors, by Charlotte, and going to see her 
new friends. 

The boarding house was unattractive and 
the vestibule where Emmy Lou stood to ring 
the bell embarrassed her by its untidiness. 
As Charlotte joined Emmy Lou at the door, 
her mother who had followed her halfway 
down the stairs called after her. She was al- 
most as pretty as Aunt Katie, though she was 
in a draggled wrapper more showy than tidy, 
and she seemed fretful and disposed to blame 
Charlotte on general principles. 

“Now do remember when it’s time to come 
239 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


kome. Though why I should expect anybody 
to remember in order to save me ” 

Rosalie and Alice and Amanthus were wait- 
ing at their gate and led them in, not to the 
house, but across the clipped lawn gleaming 
in the slanting light of the mid-afternoon, to 
a clump of shrubberies so old and hoary that 
beneath their branches was the spaeiousness of 
a room. Here the ground was heaped with 
treasure, a lace scarf, some trailing skirts, 
a velvet cape, slippers with spangled rosettes, 
feathers, fans, what not? 

“I am the goose-girl waiting until the prince 
comes,” said Amanthus. 

“I am the beggar-maid waiting for the 
king,” said Rosalie. 

“I am the forester’s foster-daughter lost in 
the woods until the prince pursuing the milk- 
white doe finds her,” said Alice. 

“Then in the twinkling of an eye our rags 
will be changed to splendor,” said Amanthus. 

240 



“ ‘There is a skirt for 


everyone and a featlier 
* 


and a fan.’” 



































Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 


“There is a skirt for everyone and a feather 
and a fan. Who will you be?” to Emmy Lou 
and Charlotte. 

They were embarrassed. “I never heard of 
the goose-girl and the others,” said Emmy 
Lou. Nor had Charlotte. 

Dismay ensued and incredulous astonish- 
ment. 

A lady came strolling from the house across 
the lawn. She was tall and fair, and as she 
drew near one saw that her smile was in her 
quiet eyes. Emmy Lou felt promptly that she 
loved her. 

“Mother,” cried Alice. 

“Cousin Adeline,” cried Rosalie and Aman- 
thus. 

“Emmy Lou and Charlotte never have 
heard of the goose-girl and the beggar- 
maid ” 

“May we have the green and gold book that 
was yours when you were little, to lend them?” 

241 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


Alice’s mother, who was Mrs. Pulteney, 
smiled at the visitors. “And this is Emmy 
Lou? And this is Charlotte? Certainly you 
may get the book to lend them.” 

Emmy Lou felt that one not only did well 
to love Mrs. Pulteney but might go further 
and adore her. 

It was agreed that Charlotte should take 
the book first. She kept it two days and 
brought it to Emmy Lou, her small, thin face 
alight. “I read it in school and got a bad 
mark, but I’ve finished it. It all came right 
for everybody.” 

She left an overlooked bookmark between 
the leaves at the story of the outcast little 
princess who went wandering into the world 
with her mother. 

Emmy Lou in her turn finished the book. 
Charlotte got one thing out of it and she got 
another. For Charlotte it all came right. 
Emmy Lou entered its portals and the glory 
242 


Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 


of understanding came upon her. Looking 
back from this land which is that within the 
sweep of the far horizon, to the old and baffling 
world left behind, all was made plain. 

Even as Hattie drew a line between those 
who are right and those who are wrong, so a 
line is drawn between those who have entered 
this land of the imagination and those who are 
left behind. One knew now why Alice flits 
where others walk, why the hair of Amanthus 
gleams, why laughter dwells in the cheek of 
Rosalie, why the face of Charlotte is trans- 
figured. And one realizes why she instinc- 
tively loves Mrs. Pulteney. It is because she 
owned the green and gold book when she was 
little ! 

Emmy Lou also felt that she understood at 
last why Mr. Reade made so poor a showing 
as a bridegroom. It is because while every 
goose-girl, beggar-maid, princess or queen 
may be and indeed is a bride, there is nothing 
i? 243 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


less than a prince sanctioned for bridegroom, 
in any instance, by the green and gold book! 

The glory of the green and gold book upon 
her, Emmy Lou went to Hattie. But she de- 
clined the loan of it, saying she didn’t believe 
in fairy tales. She had not believed in Alice, 
Rosalie, and Amanthus at first, either, though 
she had accepted them now. 

Emmy Lou took this new worry home. 
“Hattie doesn’t believe in fairy tales.” 

“She will,” from Uncle Charlie confidently. 

“When?” 

“When she gets younger, with time, like us, 
or when she overtakes a light disposition look- 
ing for an owner. But I wouldn’t be hard 
on her. Keep up heart and coax her along.” 

Hard on Llattie? Her best friend? Coax 
her along? When were she and Hattie apart? 

At Thanksgiving, Mrs. Maynard, the 
mother of Amanthus and Rosalie, a close rival 
herself to Aunt Katie in prettiness, gave a 
244 


Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 


party for her two little daughters, a party call- 
ing for white dresses and sashes and slippers. 

“Hattie doesn’t want to go, but I’ve coaxed 
her,” Emmy Lou reported at home. 

“Doesn’t want to go?” from Aunt Cordelia. 
“Why not?” 

“She says she hasn’t got a disposition for 
white dresses and slippers, she’d rather go to 
parties with candy-pulling and games.” 

Christmas came, with a Christmas Eve pan- 
tomime at the theater, which was given, so 
Uncle Charlie said, because so many of what 
he called the stock company were English. 

Mrs. Pulteney gave a party to this panto- 
mime for Alice and her friends, and though 
Uncle Charlie had asked Emmy Lou to go 
with him, in the face of this later invitation he 
withdrew his. 

“You may give our tickets to Hattie and 
Sadie if they are not already going.” 

Hattie had to be coaxed again. She said 
245 


Emmy Loiis Road to Grace 


she didn’t believe in theaters and felt she had 
to stand by her colors. Her papa who chanced 
along at the moment helped her decide. 
“There’s such a thing as making a nuisance of 
your colors,” he said, and took the tickets for 
her from Emmy Lou. 

A dreadful thing happened at school the day 
before the Christmas holidays. A little girl 
got mad at Alice. “We’ve all known some- 
thing about you and wouldn’t tell it,” she said, 
while the group about the two stood aghast. 
“Your papa and your mamma don’t live to- 
gether, and that’s why you live with Rosalie 
and Amanthus. And it’s true because it was 
all in the paper.” 

Emmy Lou hurried home all but weeping 
and told it. 

“Hush, my dear, hush,” said Aunt Cordelia. 
“For the sake of Alice’s brave mother we must 
forget it. I hoped you would not hear it.” 

Alice’s brave mother? Now the status is 
246 


Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 


fixed by a mother. Life is perplexing. One 
must explain to Hattie. 

The Christmas pantomime ! Emmy Lou had 
been to the theater before. Aunt Cordelia had 
taken her to see “Rip Van Winkle.” 

“Uncle Charlie wants you to be able to say 
you have seen certain of the great actors,” she 
had said, but Emmy Lou did not grasp that 
she was seeing the actor until it was explained 
to her afterward. She had no idea that a 
great actor would be a poor, tottering old man, 
white-haired and ragged, who brought tears to 
the onlooker as he lifted his hand to his peering 
eyes, standing there bewildered upon the stage. 

Aunt Louise took her to another play called 
“The Two Orphans.” She understood this 
less. “The name on the program is Henriette. 
Why do they call it ‘Onriette’? Is it a cold 
in their heads?” She was cross and spoke fret- 
fully because she was bothered. 

247 


Emmy Lous Hoad to Grace 


But the pantomime! Christmas Eve, the 
theater brilliant with lights and garlands, ever- 
greens wreathing the box wherein she sat in 
her new crimson dress with Alice, Rosalie, 
Amianthus, and Charlotte, and Mrs. Pulteriey 
just behind — fair and lovely Mrs. Pulteney 
who, like the mother of Charlotte, did not live 
with her husband, though Emmy Lou is doing 
her best to forget it. 

The lights go down, the curtain rises, the 
pantomime is beginning! 

Can it be so? Palace and garden, an open 
market-place, the public fountain, the shops 
and dwellings of a town, and threading the 
space thus set about, a crowding, circling 
throng, jugglers, giants, dwarfs, fairies, a 
crutch-supported witch, a white-capped baker ! 
It is the world of the green and gold book ! 

The goose-girl is here, about to put her teeth 
into an apple. The beggar-maid and her king 
are recognized. A princess and a prince, kiss- 
248 


Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 


ing their finger-tips to the boxes, are the cen- 
ter of the stage. 

No, Harlequin in his parti-colored clothes 
with his dagger, whoever Harlequin may be, 
is that center, causing the baker at a touch 
to take off his head and carry it under his arm, 
striking the apple from the lips of the goose- 
girl, tipping the crown from the head of the 
prince, twitching the scepter from the fingers 
of the princess. 

Clownery? Buffoonery? Grotesquerie? 
Emmy Lou never suspects it if it be. Bather 
it is life, which with the same perversity baffles 
the single-hearted, bewilders the seeker, and 
juggles with and decapitates the ideas even as 
Harlequin dismembers the well-meaning and 
unoffending baker. With this difference, that 
in the world Emmy Lou is gazing on all will 
be made right before the end. 

The play moves on. Who are these who now 
are the center of the scene? Emmy Lou has 
249 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


not met them before? Sad and lovely Ga- 
briella at her wheel in her woodland cottage, 
in reality a princess stolen when in the cradle, 
and Bertram her husband, forester of the ig- 
noble deeds, whose hands have wrung the white 
doe’s neck in wantonness. 

And who are these as the play moves on? 
Florizel once high-hearted prince, forced to 
dig in the nether world for gold to replace that 
forever slipping through the unmended pocket 
of Gonderiga his wife, standing by, princess 
of the slovenly heart, who is no princess in 
truth at all, but a goose-girl changed in the 
cradle. 

The play moves on to its close. The curtain 
falls, the lights come up, the pantomime is 
over. 

Hattie and Sadie joined the box party at 
the door of the theater and all went home to- 
gether on the street car. It was Christmas Eve 
250 


Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 


and the shops and streets were alight and 
crowded. As the car reached the quieter sec- 
tions the lights of the homes shone through 
the dusk. 

Charlotte left the car at her corner which 
was reached first, to go home to her mother in 
the boarding house. Mrs. Pulteney and her 
group of three said good-bye at the next corner. 
At the third, Hattie, Sadie, and Emmy Lou 
got off together. 

Hattie detained the others ere they could 
go their separate ways. Her voice was awed. 

“Maybe Charlotte’s father was like Florizel , 
once high-hearted prince ” 

Emmy Lou and Sadie gazed at Hattie. 
They caught the point. No wonder Hattie 
was awed. 

“ — and maybe Mrs. Pulteney is beautiful 
Gabriella ?” 

That night after supper Emmy Lou paused 
251 


Emmy Lou 3 s Road to Grace 


before the picture of “The Cavalier’s Wed- 
ding.” She was far from satisfied with Aunt 
Katie’s choice. 

“Why did Mr. Reade wear those black 
clothes?” she asked. 

“What are you talking about?” from Aunt 
Cordelia. 

But Uncle Charlie seemed to comprehend in 
part, at least. “Those were the trappings and 
the suits of woe.” 

“Woe?” 

“Certainly. He was the bridegroom.” 

Hattie came around the day after Christ- 
mas. Stern daughter of the voice of God in 
general, today she was hesitant. “If you 
haven’t returned that book of fairy tales, I’ll 
take it home and read it.” 


IX 

SO BUILD WE UP THE BEING 
THAT WE ARE 



IX 

SO BUILD WE UP THE BEING THAT WE ARE 

Aunt Cordelia stood behind Emmy Lou 
who was seated at the piano with “Selections 
From the Operas, for Beginners,” open on the 
rack. She paused in her counting. “Now try 
it again by yourself. You have to keep time 
if you want harmony.” 

Harmony? The mind of the performer 
dwelt on the word as she started over again. 
What is harmony? 

Aunt Cordelia relaxing her attention for the 
moment turned to speak to Uncle Charlie who 
was reading his paper by the droplight. “It’s 
no easy thing to bring up a child, Charlie.” As 
it happened, she was not referring to the prac- 
ticing. “Louise thinks Emmy Lou ought to 
255 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


be confirmed. She says now that she is eleven 
years old she surely ought to know where she 
stands.” 

It is no easy thing to be the child brought up 
either, as Emmy Lou on the piano-stool could 
have rejoined. Life and Aunt Cordelia might 
perch her on the stool but, as events were 
proving, that did not make her a musician. 
Would going up the aisle of St. Simeon’s 
to kneel at the rail, she had watched the 
confirmation class for some years now, make 
her ? 

What was it supposed to make her? An 
Episcopalian? What is an Episcopalian? Did 
she want to be one? Or did she want to be 
what Papa is? 

“Repeat, repeat,” said Aunt Cordelia be- 
hind her. “Don’t you see the dots at the end 
of the passage?” 

Emmy Lou repeated, came to the end of 
her selection, and, to the relief of herself, at 
256 


So Build We Up the Being That We Are 


least, got down. She was thinking about 
Papa. 

She had gathered from somewhere that 
when Mamma after marriage left her church 
and went with Papa to his church, there was 
feeling. 

Emmy Lou adored Papa. Aunt Cordelia 
had a brother and two sisters to go with her to 
St. Simeon’s. Surely there should be someone 
to go with Papa? But where? What was he? 

Emmy Lou had asked this question outright 
a good while ago. Papa was paying her a visit 
at the time. Unknown to her he had looked 
over her head at Aunt Cordelia and laid a 
finger on his lips. Considering the extent and 
the nature of his obligation to Aunt Cordelia, 
possibly his idea was there must be no more 
feeling, though Emmy Lou could not know 
this. 

Having thus communicated with Aunt Cor- 
delia, he answered the question. “Had my two 
257 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


grandfathers elected to be born on one side of 
the Tweed and not the other, I probably would 
have been an Episcopalian,” he said. 

“Tweedledee, in other words, instead of 
Tweedledum,” said Uncle Charlie. 

All of which meant that Papa was not an 
Episcopalian. What was he? Emmy Lou, 
eight years old then and eleven now, was still 
asking the question. 

At bedtime Aunt Cordelia spoke again 
about confirmation. “Think it over for the 
rest of the week and then come tell me what 
you have decided.” 

Emmy Lou was glad to be alone in bed. At 
eleven there is need for constant adjustment 
and readjustment of the ideas and also for 
pondering. The relations of one little girl to 
Heaven and of Heaven to one little girl call 
for pondering. People assort themselves into 
Episcopalians, Methodists, and the like. Re- 
becca Steinau is a Jew, Katie O’Brien is a 
258 


So Build We Up the Being That We Are 


Dominican, Aunt M ’randy in the kitchen is an 
Afro-American, her insurance paper entitling 
her to one first-class burial says so. Mr. Daw- 
kins’ brother is a Canadian; Maud and Albert 
Eddie say their father sometimes is sorry he’s 
not a Canadian, too. 

Is each of these assortments a religion? Or 
all the assortments religion? Has God a spe- 
cial feeling about having Emmy Lou an Epis- 
copalian when Papa is something else? Is it 
not strange that He never, never speaks? In 
which case she could ask Him and He would 
tell her. 

When Emmy Lou arrived at the grammar 
school the next morning, for she is thus far on 
the road of education now, Sadie and Hattie 
had something to tell her. 

There is a pupil in the class this year named 
Lorelei Ritter. Emmy Lou has heard it 
claimed by some that she can speak French, 
by others that she speaks German. The fact 
te 259 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


is self-evident that she speaks English. She 
is given to minding her own affairs and in 
other ways seems sufficient to herself. Miss 
Amanda, the teacher, is pronouncedly cold to 
her; they do not seem to get along. 

“Where is the Rio de la Plata River, and 
how does it flow?” Miss Amanda asked her in 
the class only yesterday. 

Lorelei had hesitated a moment. She was 
plainly bothered. 

“I thought Rio was river ?” she began, 

and stopped. Miss Amanda’s face was red. 

“Go to your seat,” she said. 

For what? How had Lorelei offended? 
The class had no idea. 

Miss Amanda had shown steady disapproval 
of Lorelei before this, and this morning Sadie 
and Hattie knew why. 

“A girl in a class upstairs told us,” said 
Sadie. “Her name is Sally White and she 
lives near Lorelei. She says Miss Amanda 
260 


So Build We Up the Being That We Are 


lives next door to Lorelei and they play the 
piano at Lorelei’s house all day Sunday with 
the windows wide open.” 

“Tunes,” Sadie went on to qualify. “It 
isn’t even as if it were hymns.” 

“Or voluntaries,” said Hattie. Voluntaries 
were permitted at Hattie’s church before serv- 
ice and Sadie did not approve of them. 

Sadie was continuing. “Sally said the 
neighbors sent word to the Ritters that it was 
a thing a Christian neighborhood couldn’t and 
wouldn’t put up with, but the Ritters go right 
on playing.” 

This was more painful to Emmy Lou than 
Sadie could know. Papa who comes to see 
her once a month keeps the piano open on 
Sunday, and plays what Sadie and Hattie dif- 
ferentiate as “tunes” as opposed to hymns and 
voluntaries, often as not dashing into what he 
explains to Uncle Charlie is this or that from 
this or that new opera. 

261 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


He plays at any and all times on Sunday, 
dropping his paper or magazine to stroll to 
the piano to pick and try, strum and hum, or, 
jerking the stool into place, to fall into sus- 
tained, and to Emmy Lou who herself is still 
counting aloud, breathless and incredible per- 
formance. 

She is aware that Aunt Cordelia does not 
willingly consent to this use of the piano on 
Sunday, and she also is aware of a definite 
stand taken by Uncle Charlie in the matter, to 
which Aunt Cordelia reluctantly yields. 

In the past Papa has been Papa, personality 
with no detail, accepted and adored, just as 
Aunt Cordelia has been and is Aunt Cordelia, 
supreme and undisputed. But now Papa’s 
personality is beginning to have its details. 
He still is Papa, but he is more. He is 
tall and slight and has quick, clever hands, 
and impatient motions of the head, together 
with oddly regardful, considering, debating 
262 


So Build We Up the Being That We Are 


eyes, fixed on their object through rimmed eye- 
glasses. 

Papa is “brilliant,” vague term appropri- 
ated from Uncle Charlie who says so. If he 
were not a brilliant editor he would have been 
a brilliant musician. Uncle Charlie says this 
also. 

And today at school Emmy Lou hears from 
Sadie that piano playing on Sunday is a thing 
a Christian neighborhood can’t and won’t put 
up with! 

“Aren’t the Ritters Christians?” she asked 
anxiously. 

“How can they be when they play all day 
Sunday?” Sadie returned. “Lorelei told Sally 
that her father, Signor Ritter, was Fra Di- 
avolo in an opera once. And Sally says they 
are proud of it and can’t forget it. Every one 
of the family plays on some instrument and 
they take Sunday when they’re all home to 
play Fra Diavolo till the neighbors can’t 
268 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 

stand it. Sally asked Lorelei what Fra Di- 
avolo means, and she said Brother Devil.” 

This again was information more painful 
to Emmy Lou than Sadie could know. Papa 
on his visits, while dressing in the mornings, 
or later when wandering about the house or 
running through the contents of some book 
picked up from the table, breaks into song, 
palpably familiar and favored song even if 
absently and disjointedly rendered. Emmy 
Lou has heard it often as not on Sunday. 
Uncle Charlie in speaking of it once said it 
was “in vogue” — another term appropriated 
by Emmy Lou — when Papa was a young man 
studying in Paris. 

The song favored thus ended with up-flung 
and gayly defiant notes and words that said 
and resaid with emphatic and triumphant 
finality, “Fra Diavolo”! Though what the 
words meant Emmy Lou had no idea until 
now. 

264 


So Build We Up the Being That We Are 


“If the Ritters are not Christians, what are 
they?” she asked. 

Sadie had information about this. “Sally 
says the neighbors say they are Bohemians.” 

Unfortunately Emmy Lou has heard this 
term before, though she had not grasped that 
it was a religion. Aunt Cordelia frequently 
worries over Papa. 

“He’s a regular Bohemian,” she frets to 
Uncle Charlie. 

Before school was dismissed on this same 
Friday, there were other worries for Emmy 
Lou. When in time she arrived home, full of 
chagrin, Papa was there for his usual visit 
and wanted to hear about the chagrin and its 
cause. 

Words are given out in class at grammar 
school, as Papa knows, to be defined and illus- 
trated by a sentence. One may be faithful to 
the meaning as construed from the dictionary, 
and lose out in class too. 

265 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


“A girl in the class named Lorelei Ritter 
laughed at my sentence, and then the rest 
laughed too.” 

“What was the word?” inquired Papa. 

“Concomitant.” 

“And what did you say?” 

“ ‘A thing that accompanies.’ He played 
the concomitant to her song.” 

Uncle Charlie shouted, but Papa’s laugh was 
a little rueful. “Poor little mole working i’ 
the dark. Will the light never break for her, 
Charlie, do you suppose?” 

What did he mean, and why is he rueful? 
Is the trouble with her who would give all she 
is or hopes to be in adoring offering to Papa? 
Can he, even in the light of what she has heard 
today, be open to criticism? Certainly not. 
Papa may be a Bohemian, and a Bohemian 
may not be a Christian, but what he is that 
shall Emmy Lou be also. 

To decide is to act. Papa went down town 
266 


So Build We Up the Being That We Are 


after dinner with Uncle Charlie, and Emmy 
Lou took her place at the piano. Ordinarily 
she is loath to practice, going through the or- 
deal because Aunt Cordelia requires it. But 
today she goes about it as a practical matter 
with a definite purpose. 

Papa brought her the “Selections From the 
Operas” some while back, with the remark that 
a little change from exercises to melody might 
introduce cheer into a melancholy business 
all around. But so far this had not been 
the result, “Selection No. 1 — Sextette from 
Lucia,” reducing her to tears, and “Selection 
No. 2 — I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble 
Halls,” doing almost as much for Aunt Cor- 
delia. 

But now that Emmy Lou had a purpose, the 
matter was different. There was a table of 
contents to the “Selections From the Operas,” 
and a certain title therein had caught her eye 
in the past. Seated on the piano-stool, lean- 
267 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


ing over the book on her lap, she passed her 
finger down the list. 

Selection 13. She thought so. She found 
the page and replaced the open book upon the 
rack. Fra Diavolo . She set to work. What 
Papa is that will she be also. 

She desisted by and by long enough to go 
and ask a question of Aunt Cordelia. 

“If I were to be confirmed at St. Sim- 
eon’s could I practice my selections on Sun- 
day?” 

“Practice them on Sunday?” Aunt Cor- 
delia had enough trouble getting her to prac- 
tice on week-days to be outdone with the ques- 
tion. “Why do you ask such a thing? You 
know you could not.” 

That night Emmy Lou asked Papa a ques- 
tion a little falteringly: “Are you a Bohe- 
mian?” 

“Instead, the veriest drudge you ever knew,” 
he said. “There’s too much on me, making a 
268 


So Build We Up the Being That We Are 


living for us both, to be so glorious a 
thing.” 

Then what was Papa? 

She went around to ask a question of Sadie 
the next morning. She had been to Sadie’s 
church often enough to know that she liked 
to go. The prayers were long but the singing 
was frequent and hearty. No one need mark 
the time at Sadie’s church, the singing marking 
its own time warmly and strongly until it 
seemed to swing and sway, and Sadie sang and 
Emmy Lou sang and everybody sang, and 
Emmy Lou for one wasn’t sure she did not 
swing and sway too, and her heart was buoyant 
and warm. She loved the songs at Sadie’s 
church ; what matter if she did not know what 
they meant? 

“Oh, there’s honey in the Rock, my brother, 
There’s honey in the Rock for you, 

Leave your sins for the blood to cover, 

There is honey in the Rock for you, for you.” 

269 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 

She could wish that Papa might be a Meth- 
odist. It hardly was likely, all things consid- 
ered, but one could make sure. 

“Would ‘Selections From the Operas’ be al- 
lowed by your church on Sunday?” she asked 
Sadie. 

Sadie not only was horrified but, like Aunt 
Cordelia, was outdone. “Why, Emily Louise 
McLaurin, you know they would not be!” she 
said indignantly. 

Emmy Lou had no such desire for Papa to 
be a Presbyterian. She had been with Hattie 
often enough to know that the emphasis is all 
on the sermon there. Hattie knew her feeling 
and when inviting her to go put the emphasis 
on the voluntary of which she was proud. 

This very Saturday afternoon she came 
around full of information and enthusiasm. 
“Our soprano has done so well with her new 
teacher, he is going to play our organ tomor- 
row by request and she is going to sing a solo 
270 


So Build We Up the Being That We Are 


during the collection. I want you to come 
from Sunday school and go/’ 

She had other news. “I asked Lorelei Rit- 
ter yesterday after school if she was a Bo- 
hemian and she got mad. She said no, she 
wasn’t, she was a Bavarian.” 

Aunt Louise spoke to Aunt Cordelia that 
night. “Emmy Lou must decide in the next 
day or two if she is going to enter the confirma- 
tion class this year; I have to report for her.” 

The next day was Sunday, and Emmy Lou 
heard Papa humming and singing in his room 
as he dressed, Fra Diavolo the burden of it. 

The chimes at Sadie’s church two squares 
away, were playing, 

“How beauteous are their feet 
Who stand on Zion’s hill, 

Who bring salvation on their tongues 
And words of peace reveal!” 

From afar the triple bells of St. Simeon’s 
flung their call on the morning air. Nor 
271 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


Methodist nor yet Episcopalian would be sing- 
ing Fra Diavolo on Sunday morning as he 
dressed. What was Papa? 

What was he? As he and Emmy Lou went 
down the stairs together to breakfast, she 
caught his hand to her cheek in a sudden pas- 
sion of adoring. What Papa was, she would 
be! 

She hurried from Sunday school around to 
Hattie’s church on S wayne Street. Hattie 
defended the absence of a bell by saying 
they didn’t need a bell to tell them when to 
go to church; they knew and went. 

It was a brick church, long built, and a 
trifle mossy as to its foundations, discreet in 
its architecture, and well-kept. 

Hattie was waiting for Emmy Lou at the 
door. Her very hair-ribbons, a serviceable 
brown, exact and orderly, seemed to stand for 
steadiness and reliability in conviction. 

What did Emmy Lou’s blue hair-ribbons 
272 


So Build We Up the Being That We Are, 


stand for? Blue is true, and she would be true 
to whatever the conviction of Papa. 

“The strange organist is going to play the 
voluntary too,” Hattie explained. “It’s almost 
time for him to begin. Hurry.” 

As they went in, she told another thing: 
“Lorelei and her mother are here, sitting in a 
back pew.” 

There were two points of cheer in the serv- 
ice at Hattie’s church as Emmy Lou saw it, 
the voluntary and the collection. She had re- 
ferred to this last as the offertory on a visit 
long ago, but never would make the mistake 
again, so sharply had Hattie corrected her. 

Hardly were they settled in their places in 
the pew with Hattie’s father and mother, when 
a large man with black hair and shaggy brows 
made his way to the organ in the loft behind 
the minister, and the voluntary began. 

This the voluntary that along with hymns is 
advocated for Sundays? This that stole over 
273 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


the keys hunting the melody, to find it here 
and lose it there, with a promise that baffled 
and a familiarity which eluded, to overtake it 
at length and proffer it in high and challeng- 
ing measure that said gayly and triumphantly 
above the thunderous beat supporting it, in 
all but words, Fra Diavolo! 

Hattie’s face was shining! And the faces 
of her mother, of her father, and of the con- 
gregation around, radiated approval and satis- 
faction ! 

And in time the soprano of Hattie’s church 
arose in the loft above the minister, supported 
by the choir. It was the collection. 

It was more. It was “Selection No. 1 — 
Sextette from Lucia”! Though the words did 
not say so ! 

Hattie, then, had not been blaming Lorelei 
but defending her? It was Sadie who disap- 
proved of voluntaries and Lorelei? 

Emmy Lou with heightened color, resolute 
274 


So Build We Up the Being That We Are 


face, and blue bows, arrived at home. She 
went straight to Papa just returned from 
Uncle Charlie’s office and strumming on the 
piano. 

“You’re a Presbyterian,” she said. 

“It sounds like an indictment,” said Uncle 
Charlie. “But he will have to own up. Admit 
your guilt, Alec. How did you find it out?” 

“Presbyterians play and sing ‘Selections 
From the Operas’ on Sunday, and so does he.” 

“You look ruffled, Alec,” from Uncle 
Charlie. “But so does someone else. Your 
cheeks are hot,” to Emmy Lou. “Something 
else is disturbing; out with it.” 

“The girl named Lorelei Ritter who laughed 
at me Friday in class was at church and spoke 
to me coming out.” 

“What did she say?” 

“She said did I know it was her father who 
played the concomitant to the soprano’s 
song?” 


19 


275 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


“Invite her round, and urge her to be 
friendly,” begged Uncle Charlie when he 
stopped shouting. “We need her badly. Be- 
sides I’m sure I’d like to know her.” 

Aunt Cordelia came downstairs that night 
after seeing Emmy Lou to bed. “Whatever 
is to be done with the child? Has she talked 
to you, Alec? She says she can’t be confirmed 
because she is going to be a Presbyterian. And 
then she cried bitterly. They stand up to pray 
and sit down to sing, she told me desperately. 
That if it was right — which it wasn’t, of course, 
— she’d wish people didn’t have to be Episco- 
palians or Bohemians or Presbyterians, but 
just Christians. I told her I thought we would 
drop the question of confirmation until next 
year.” 









SO TRUTH BE IN THE FIELD 






X 


SO TRUTH BE IN THE FIELD 

A year later Sarah, the sister of Albert Ed- 
die Dawkins, saw him through the six weeks 
of the confirmation class, up the aisle of St. 
Simeon’s and confirmed. The next day she 
started to England to visit her mother’s people 
who had prospered. 

“In a way I can feel he is safe now,” she said 
to Aunt Louise at Sunday school on the day 
of his confirmation. “I wasn’t easy about him 
before, if he is my brother. If he’ll only go 
ahead now, he’ll do.” 

Aunt Cordelia saw Emmy Lou through the 
same class of preparation, up the aisle and 
confirmed, and then came home and had a 
hearty cry. She who always claimed she was 
279 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


too busy seeing to meals, the house, and those 
within it, to give way! 

“I am sure she is where her mother would 
have her,” she said to Aunt Louise through 
her tears. “And her father would not hear to 
the alternative when I offered to discuss it. If 
only I can feel that in time she will be what 
her mother would have her!” 

This seemed to put the odium on Emmy Lou 
in the event of failure. She would be thirteen 
years old in another month, her cheek-line was 
changing from round to oval, she was prepar- 
ing for the high school, and her waist, accord- 
ing to Miss Anna Williams, the seamstress 
who made her confirmation dress, is coming 
round to be a waist. 

She looked in distress at Aunt Cordelia who 
was drying her eyes in vain since the tears were 
continuing, and who seemed far from reas- 
sured that she will be what her mother would 
have her? There was nothing for it in the 
280 


So Truth Be in the Field 


face of the implication but for Emmy Lou to 
throw herself into Aunt Cordelia’s lap and cry 
too. After which the atmosphere cleared, the 
normal was resumed, and everybody felt better. 

Sarah, who spoke with more flattering cer- 
tainty about the future of Albert Eddie, wore 
her hair coiled on her head now, and her skirts 
were long. Capable, dependable, and to the 
point as ever, she was a young lady. 

When Aunt Cordelia, accompanied by 
Emmy Lou, went to do her marketing the Sat- 
urday before Sarah left for England, her 
mother called her down to say good-bye. 

“It’s a long journey for you at eighteen, 
Sarah,” said Aunt Cordelia, “and we will be 
glad when we hear you have reached its end 
safely.” 

“I can trust Sarah; I always could,” said 
her mother. “If anything goes wrong she’ll 
just have to remember what her grandmother, 
my mother, used to say to her when she was a 
281 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


wee ’un, and prone to fret when matters snarled 
and she found she couldn’t right ’em, ‘When 
you get to wit’s end you’ll always find God 
lives there.’ ” 

Aunt Cordelia shook hands with Sarah, but 
Emily Louise, as many persons now called 
her, went up on her toes and kissed her. 

“You must ask the prayers of the church for 
the preservation of all who travel by land and 
by water,” Aunt Cordelia said to Mrs. Daw- 
kins, “and we ourselves must remember her in 
our prayers. We will miss you, Sarah, in the 
singing of the hymns on special days and Wed- 
nesday evenings when we haven’t a choir. I’m 
glad you went to the organist and had those 
lessons. A fresh young voice, sweet and strong 
and sure, like yours, can give great comfort 
and pleasure.” 

Hattie was a member of her church now, and 
Sadie of hers. Rosalie, Alice, and Amanthus 
were making ready for confirmation at St. 

282 


So Truth Be in the Field 


Philip’s which was high church. All had gone 
their ways, each to the portal of her own per- 
suasion, as it were, and knocked and said, “I 
am informed that by this gate is the way 
thither.” 

And in answer the gate which is the way 
thither, according to the understanding of 
each, had opened and taken the suppliant in 
and closed behind her. 

Which, then, is the gate? And which the 
way? Each and all so sure? 

Time was, before the eyes of Emmy Lou 
were opened, when she supposed there was but 
one way. She even had pictured it, sweet and 
winding and always upward. 

This was at a time when Sarah gathering 
Maud and Albert Eddie and Emmy Lou 
around her in the sitting-room above the gro- 
cery, about the hob, which is to say the grate, 
sang them hymns. It was from one of these 
hymns that Emmy Lou had pictured the way. 

283 


Emmy Lous Road to Grace 


By cool Siloam’s shady rill 
How fair the lily grows, 

How sweet the breath beneath the hill 
Of Sharon’s dewy rose. 

According to Sarah’s hymns there were two 
classes of travelers on this sweet and goodly 
way. 

Children of the Heavenly King, 

As ye journey sweetly sing! 

These Emmy Lou conceived of first. Later 
she saw others of whom Sarah sang, less buoy- 
ant, less tripping, but with upturned faces no 
less expectant. 

And laden souls by thousands meekly stealing 

Kind Shepherd turn their weary steps to Thee. 

Emmy Lou listening to Sarah’s hymns even 
saw these welcomed. 

Angels of Jesus, 

Angels of light, 

284 


So Truth Be in the Field 


Singing to welcome 

The pilgrims of the night. 


But that was time ago. There is no one and 
common road whose dust as it nears Heaven is 
gold and its pavement stars. Each knocks at 
the portal of his own persuasion and says, “I 
am informed that by this gate is the way 
thither.” 

But Albert Eddie, having entered his portal, 
was in doubt. “What is it she wants me to do 
now I’m in?” he said to Emmy Lou, by “she” 
meaning Sarah, and by “in,” the church of his 
adoption. His question began in a husky mut- 
ter of desperation and ended in a high treble 
of exasperation. Or was it merely that his 
voice was uncertain? 

For to each age its phenomena, as inevitable 
as inexplicable. Albert Eddie’s voice these 
days was undependable. Emmy Lou felt an 
uncharacteristic proneness to tears. Rosalie 
285 


Emmy Lou 3 s Road to Grace 


said it would be wisdom teeth next for every- 
body all round. 

But if Albert Eddie seemed baffled and hazy 
as to what his duties were following confirma- 
tion, Aunt Louise left no doubt with Emmy 
Lou. The confirmation had been in May, and 
now a week later lawns were green and lilacs 
and snowballs in bloom. 

“Now that you are a member of the church 
you can’t begin too soon to take your place 
and do your part,” Aunt Louise told her. 
“The lawn fete is Thursday night on the Good- 
wins’ lawn. I am going to give you ten tickets 
to sell, and send ten by you to Albert Eddie 
since Sarah is not here to give them to him.” 

Emmy Lou took the tickets prepared to do 
the best she could. She had had experience 
with them before. It is only your friends who 
take them of you, as a necessity and a matter 
of course, a recognized and expected tax on 
friendship, as it were. 

286 


So Truth Be in the Field 


Associates who are not intimates decline. 
One named Lettie Grierson, in declining Em- 
my Lou’s tickets now, voiced it all. 

“Why should I buy tickets from you? You 
never bought any from me.” 

Hattie took one and said she’d go home and 
get the money and bring it round. 

When she arrived that afternoon she 
brought a message from home with the money. 
“Mamma says to tell you our church is going 
to have a lecture on the Holy Land on the 
twenty-fifth.” 

Sadie was present, having come to pay for 
her ticket. “Our Sunday school is going to 
have a boat excursion up the river in June. 
The tickets will be twenty-five cents,” she told 
Emmy Lou. 

Rosalie arrived a bit later with the money 
for her ticket. “Alice and Amanthus can’t 
go. They went to Lettie Grierson’s church 
concert last week and I didn’t. I can go if 
287 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


I may come and go with you from your house.” 

These three tickets thus disposed of, Emmy 
Lou’s own, and the three taken by Uncle 
Charlie for the rest of the household made a 
fairly creditable showing. 

Albert Eddie had less luck. Maud, his sis- 
ter, so he explained, had been ahead of him, 
and wherever he might have gone, she had 
been. 

“Joe Kiffin, our driver, took one, though he 
won’t go, and the other one I’ve sold is for 
myself.” 

He seemed worried. “I tried,” he said. “I 
promised Sarah I’d try every time it was put 
up to me.” 

It was arranged that not only Rosalie but 
Hattie and Sadie should come and go with 
Emmy Lou. When they arrived, on the day, 
about five o’clock, each had her ticket and her 
money. 

A lawn fete for the church is no unmerce- 
288 


So Truth Be in the Field 


nary matter. Your ticket only admits you to 
the lantern-hung grounds, which is enough for 
you to expect, and once within you have to buy 
your supper. That it is paid for and eaten 
largely by those whose homes have donated it 
has nothing to do with the matter. Aunt Cor- 
delia having been notified that her contribu- 
tion would be beaten biscuit, a freezer of ice- 
cream and chickens. 

In this case there must be carfare also, the 
Goodwins and their lawn being half an hour’s 
ride by street car from the center of things. 

Aunt Cordelia came to the door with Emmy 
Lou to meet the three. “Go ahead,” she said. 
“Louise is already there and will look after 
you. Eat your suppers when you prefer. 
Charlie and I will come later and bring you 
home.” 

The four found Albert Eddie at the corner 
waiting for the car. His hair was very, very 
smooth, and his Sunday suit was spick and 
289 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


span as if Sarah were home to see to it instead 
of well on her way to England, her rules and 
regulations evidently being of a nature to stay 
by one. 

Perhaps it was an ordeal for Albert Eddie 
to have four girls descend on him, for he turned 
red and cleared his throat as though forced into 
declaring himself in maintaining his ground. 
Emmy Lou was his friend, and ignoring the 
others he addressed her. 

“Maud went ahead with some friends of her 
own,” he explained. “She said they wouldn’t 
want me.” 

The obvious thing was to ask him to go with 
them. Had Emily Louise been speaking for 
herself alone, she would have done so, Albert 
Eddie being her friend and going to her Sun- 
day school. On the other hand, his father kept 
a grocery at the corner just passed, and lived 
over it with his family. He wasn’t the friend 
of her three companions and he didn’t go to 
290 


So Truth Be m the Field 


their Sunday school. Emily Louise understood 
many things which Emmy Lou wot not of. 
Would they want him? 

Verging on thirteen, one has heard this na- 
ture of thing and its distinctions discussed at 
home. 

Aunt Louise objected to certain associates 
of Emily Louise not long ago. “It’s why I 
am and always have been opposed to the public 
school for her. She picks up with every class 
and condition.” 

“And why I have opposed your opposition,” 
returned Uncle Charlie, “since it is her best 
chance in life to know every class and condi- 
tion.” 

“I’m sure I don’t know why she should,” 
Aunt Louise had said. 

“An argument in itself in that you don’t 
know,” from Uncle Charlie. 

Fortunately for Emily Louise in the pres- 
ent case of Albert Eddie, twelve verging on 
291 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


thirteen was yet democratic. “We’ll all go 
together,” said Hattie as a matter of course, 
and the others agreed. 

Hattie, as ever, was marshal and spokesman. 
They boarded the car and sat down. “Fifty 
cents all around to begin with,” she stated 
after fares were paid and the common wealth 
displayed. “Five cents put in for carfare. 
Forty-five cents left all around. Five cents 
to come home on, five cents to spend, and 
thirty-five cents for supper just makes it.” 

Church creeds and nomenclatures may vary 
but the laws of church fetes and fairs are the 
same. As the five left the car and approached 
the Goodwins’ home, Whitney and Logan 
were patrolling the sidewalk outside the gate 
and the lantern-hung yard from whence arose 
the bustle and chatter of the lawn fete. 

Logan wore a baker’s cap and carried a tray 
hung from his neck and piled with his wares, 
which a placard set thereamong proclaimed to 
292 



“ ‘We haven’t got a show against the girls . . . to sell 

anything.’ ’’ 









So Truth Be in the Field 


be “Homemade Caramel Taffy, Five a Bag.” 
Whitney was assisting Logan to dispose of his 
wares. 

The two stopped the five. “We haven’t a 
show against the girls on the inside to sell any- 
thing,” they said. “Buy from us.” 

“Five cents for a hag all around and forty 
cents left, five cents to get home and thirty- 
five cents for supper,” from Hattie the calcu- 
lator, who liked to keep things clear. 

Five bags were being exchanged for five 
cents all around when an elderly gentleman 
came along. Negotiations with the five being 
held up while he was pressed to buy candy, he 
brusquely replied that he had no change. 

Neither had Logan or Whitney, business 
having been brisker than they admitted. But 
they did not let that deter them from corner- 
ing the gentleman into a showdown. Nor did 
a two-dollar bill, when produced, bother them. 

Whitney had heard the financial status of 
20 293 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


the five just outlined by Hattie, and did some 
creditable calculating himself. Like Hattie 
he was good at figures. 

“You have five forties between you,” he 
said. “You take the bill and let us have the 
change. You’ll get it fixed all right when you 
get your suppers.” 

The party of five was loath but saw no way 
out of it. Held up, as it were, they reluctantly 
gave over their forty cents around and pinned 
their gazes anxiously on the two-dollar bill in 
the hand of the elderly gentleman. 

He seemed no better pleased than they, 
showing indeed a degree of temper unbecom- 
ing under the circumstances and using lan- 
guage somewhat heated for a church fair. 

“What in heaven’s name do I want with 
caramel taffy without a tooth in my head that’s 
my own?” 

He thrust the bill at Albert Eddie who took 
it hastily, and the five moved on. 

294 


So Truth Be in the Field 


“Who was it?” Sadie asked Emmy Lou and 
Albert Eddie, since this was their lawn fete. 
“He’s coming in the gate behind us. Do you 
know?” 

Unfortunately they did. It seemed to de- 
tract from that cordiality of welcome they 
would prefer to associate with their lawn 
fete. 

“It’s Mr. Goodwin,” Emily Louise told 
them. “It’s his house and yard. He must just 
be getting home.” 

One’s friends are loyal. Hattie covered the 
silence. “His wife must have said they could 
have it here before she asked him. I’ve known 
it to happen so before.” 

“We’ll go get our suppers,” said Albert 
Eddie anxiously. “That way we’ll each get 
our carfare back and it’ll be off our minds.” 

They found Emmy Lou’s Aunt Louise un- 
der a grape-arbor, dishing ice-cream from a 
freezer into saucers on the ground around 
295 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


it. A great many things are in order at a 
church fete that would not be tolerated at 
home. 

“Go get your suppers,” she said to the 
group. “I'm busy and will be; don’t depend 
on me for anything.” 

The party of five took their places about a 
table a few moments after. Two of them 
were familiar figures in the Big Boom at St. 
Simeon’s Sunday school. The three young 
ladies who rushed up, tray in hand, to wait on 
them, were far, far older — eminent representa- 
tives of that superior caste of St. Simeon’s 
Sunday school, the Bible Class. 

It was a friendly rivalry that was on among 
the three, each waitress of the evening endea- 
voring in her earnings to outstrip and eclipse 
all other waitresses and so carry off the glory 
of the occasion. In the present instance the 
swiss apron and cap with the yellow ribbons 
won out, and the other two waitresses with- 
296 


So Truth Be in the Field 


drew with laughter and recrimination of a 
vigorous nature, leaving the party of five 
overwhelmed by the notice from the surround- 
ing tables and the publicity thus brought upon 
them. 

The wearer of the swiss apron with the yel- 
low ribbons was an arch and easy person, over- 
whelming her five charges further with offhand 
and jocose remarks indicative of condescension 
as she brought five suppers, substantiate, lem- 
onade, ice cream and cake, put them down, and, 
as it were, got through with it. 

Even to the payment. And as Albert Ed- 
die produced a two-dollar bill and she took it, 
she was easily, superlatively, meaningly arch 
as she said, 

“We don’t give change at church fairs to 
gentlemen.” 

Uncle Charlie, with Aunt Cordelia, taking 
the party home, paid everyone’s carfare but 
297 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


Albert Eddie’s. When the time came for leav- 
ing he could not be found. 

“We lost him right after supper,” Hattie 
explained. 

“As soon as he heard us say you were com- 
ing to get us,” from Emmy Lou. 

“He didn’t eat any supper, just pretended 
to,” from Sadie. “He was trying not to cry.” 

“Sadie!” from Rosalie. 

“We never, never should tell it if he was,” 
from Hattie. 

“Logan and Whitney said he left early,” 
said Rosalie, “that he told them he would have 
to walk home.” 

Uncle Charlie deposited the members of 
the party at their several homes and then, be- 
ing the editor of a newspaper, went back down- 
town. 

Emmy Lou, oftener than she could enumer- 
ate, had waked in the past to hear him on his 
return in the late, or, to be exact, the early 
298 


So Truth Be in the Field 


hours, stop at Aunt Cordelia’s door with news 
that the world would hear the next morning. 

She waked at his return tonight. He did 
more than tap at Aunt Cordelia’s door, he went 
in. Hearing Aunt Cordelia cry out at his 
words, Emmy Lou went hurriedly pattering 
in from her adjoining room. As she entered, 
the door on the opposite side of the room 
opened and Aunt Louise came in, slipping on 
her bedroom wrapper. 

The light was on and Aunt Cordelia was 
sitting up in bed with tears running unre- 
strainedly down her face. 

Uncle Charlie, about to explain to Aunt 
Louise, looked at Emmy Lou and hesitated. 

“No, go on,” Aunt Cordelia told him. “She 
is a big girl and must hear these things from 
now on with the rest of us.” 

Uncle Charlie, reflective for a moment, 
seemed to conclude she was right and went on. 

“The ship on which Sarah Dawkins crossed 
299 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


foundered on the rocks off the Irish coast in 
a heavy sea this morning and went to pieces 
against the cliffs in the sight of shore. The 
dispatches report only three persons saved, 
and tell of a cook who went about with pots of 
coffee, and of a girl named Sarah Dawkins 
who gathered some children about her and 
whose voice could be clearly heard by those on 
shore in the lulls of the storm singing hymns to 
them to the end.” 

Something happened to Uncle Charlie’s 
voice. After finding it he went on. “I hurried 
right home. It’s past twelve, Cordelia, but 
don’t you think you had better dress and let 
me take you up to Mrs. Dawkins at once?” 

Emmy Lou crept into Aunt Cordelia’s bed 
as Uncle Charlie went out and Aunt Cordelia 
got up and began to dress hastily. 

Strange tremors were seizing Emmy Lou, 
but she must not weep, must not detain or dis- 
tract Aunt Cordelia. She was a big girl and 
300 


So Truth Be in the Field 


must hear and bear these things now with the 
rest. 

“The child, the poor, poor child, alone on 
that great ship without kith or kin!” said Aunt 
Cordelia as she fastened her collar, still weep- 
ing. Then she came and kissed E mm y Lou. 

“I may be gone some time. Stay where you 
are and I’ll leave the light.” 

Did the tears come before or after Aunt 
Louise kissed and soothed her and then went 
back to bed ? Emmy Lou rather thought they 
came after she was gone. And after the tu- 
mult of tears had spent themselves? 

A picture arose in her mind, unbidden and 
unexpected, of Albert Eddie, hurt, mortified, 
and outraged, walking home block after block 
from the lawn fete because church fairs do not 
give any change. 

“What is it she wants me to do now I’m in?” 
he had asked following his confirmation. 

And what was it that Sarah did want of Al- 
301 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


bert Eddie? Sarah who saw him confirmed 
and left next day? Sarah assembling the chil- 
dren on the ship and singing hymns to them to 
the end? 

And suddenly Emmy Lou, twelve years old 
verging on thirteen, saw for the first time ! 

Sarah dependably mixing the Saturday bak- 
ing in the crock, Sarah looking after her 
younger sister and brother as best she knew 
how, Sarah singing hymns to them sitting 
about the hob, which is the grate, was being 
made into that Sarah who could gather the 
children about her on the sinking ship and sing 
to them to the end. Not Sarah mixing the 
baking in the crock, but Sarah dependably 
mixing the baking in the crock. Herein came 
the light. 

And all the while Emmy Lou had thought 
the digit on the slate in its day was the thing, 
and later the copybook, and only yesterday, 
the conjugation of the verb. Whereas Sarah 
302 


So Truth Be in the Field 


now had shown her what nor home, nor school, 
nor Sunday school, nor confirmation class had 
made her see, that the faithfulness with which 
the digit is put on the slate, the script in the 
copybook, and the conjugation of the verb on 
the tablets of the mind, is the education and 
the thing! 

This, then, is the gate? This the way that 
leads thither? The sweet and common road 
along which the children of the Heavenly King 
are journeying? Faithful little Sister from 
the alley of so long ago, gentle and loving Izzy 
of that same far-gone day, Hattie helping a 
schoolmate comrade over the hard places ? This 
is the road whereon those older, laden souls are 
stealing? The road, if once gained by the pil- 
grim, whether he be Episcopalian, Bohemian, 
Presbyterian, or Afro-American, on which he 
will go straight onward. The path where, like 
bells at evening pealing, the voice of Jesus 
sounds o’er land and sea. 

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Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


Sea? Prayers of the church were asked that 
Sarah be preserved from the perils of land and 
water! And Sarah was lost! 

Lost? Was Sarah lost? 

“We’ll miss your voice, so sweet and strong 
and true, in the hymns,” Aunt Cordelia had 
told Sarah. 

Would her voice be missed? Her voice sing- 
ing to the children to the end? It came with 
a flash of sudden comprehension to Emmy Lou, 
lying there in Aunt Cordelia’s big bed waiting 
for her return, that Sarah’s voice would not be 
missed but heard forever, singing hymns to 
the end to those little children of the King. 

“What does she want me to do now I’m in?” 
asked Albert Eddie. Sarah had answered him. 
Make himself ready for whatsoever part should 
be his. 

“The child, the poor, poor child, alone on 
that great ship without kith or kin!” Aunt Cor- 
delia had said, weeping. 

804 


So Truth Be in the Field 


W as she thus alone ? “When you get to wit’s 
end you will always find God lives there,” her 
grandmother had told her when she was a wee 
’un. Had not Sarah given proof that when 
she got to wit’s end God did live there? 

Emmy Lou was weeping no longer. She 
lay still. A wonder and an awe suffused her. 
To the far horizon the landscape of life was 
irradiated. She was tranquil. The Silence 
had spoken at last. 

Aunt Louise remarked to Aunt Cordelia a 
few days later, “Did I tell you that we made 
a hundred and fifty dollars at the lawn fete?” 

“By fair means or foul?” asked Uncle Char- 
lie, overhearing. “I must say, Louise, in the 
name of the church I stand for, I don’t like 
your methods.” 

Perhaps Uncle Charlie and Emily Louise 
were seeing the same thing, Albert Eddie, hurt, 
mortified, and outraged, walking home in the 
305 


Emmy Lou's Road to Grace 


night because St. Simeon’s lawn fete didn’t 
give change to gentlemen. 

Aunt Cordelia spoke after Emmy Lou went 
up to bed. “She brought home her report of 
the final examinations from school today. She 
got through!” 

“By the skin of her teeth as usual?” from 
Uncle Charlie. 

“Just that. She works so hard to so little 
end, Charlie. I don’t understand it. But at 
least she is always faithful.” 


Some said, John, print it; others said, Not so: 
Some said, It might do good; others said, No. 

— The Pilgrim's Progress . 


































































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